Nigeria’s Whitewashed Heads Of State — MKO Abiola

What do MKO Abiola and Sani Abacha have in common?

1. They both actively supported coups that removed Nigerian leaders;
2. They were both disappointed by a close friend who promised they would become Nigeria’s President/Head of State.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. If you have been following the #WWHOS series, you are familiar with Abacha’s stories and his eventual demise — but not Abiola, or why Abiola, who never became a President, is featuring in the series.

A grinning Alhaji Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola GCFR, Aare Ona Kankafo XIV of Yorubaland, surrounded by supporters.

Abacha and Abiola — throughout their adult lives — were like a train station and a train; they always found a way to return to each other. And this is that story.

Meet MKO Abiola GCFR, Rags to Riches

Born on August 24, 1937, in Abeokuta, Southwest Nigeria, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola is his father’s 23rd child.

His name, Kashimawo, means let us wait and see [if he will survive]; an allusion to his parents’ uncertainty that he would survive infancy like the 22 children before him. He did. Unfortunately, Abiola’s unique status as the long-awaited child to make it through infancy did not protect him from the calloused hands of poverty that his parents met him with. Luckily, unlike most people around him, MKO was brilliant and would do anything to stay in school.

MKO Abiola (sitting middle) and Olusegun Obasanjo (behind him to his left) in a group picture at Baptist Boys School. Image culled from PMNews.

Staying in school at Baptist Boys School for MKO meant that he had to pay for his education by singing and drumming at parties (Maier). MKO said he would occasionally wake up at 3 a.m. and walk four miles to fetch firewood, sell it, and use the money to support his family (Siollun). After secondary school, he earned a scholarship to study accountancy at the University of Glasgow, married his first wife, Simbiat, and had his first two kids before returning to Nigeria (Siollun). In Nigeria, he worked briefly for Guinness, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, before serving as the Chief Accountant of Pfizer (Maier).

It is essential to mention that MKO moved back to Nigeria in the mid-1960s, slightly before the Nigerian Civil War…