Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Linguistics and Foreign Affairs, Jamiu Abiola, has said Nigeria would have become better economically if his late father, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, had been allowed to become president in 1993.
Naijaonpoint reports that Jamiu spoke on Thursday during Channels Television’s June 12 Special Forum to celebrate Nigeria’s 26 years of unbroken democratic rule.
He stated that 1993 was a special global time Nigeria could have tapped into the international economic boom, but the country had a Kleptomaniac as head of state.
Thirty-two years after the election was annulled and 25 years after MKO’s death, Jamiu decried that some people were hellbent on erasing his father’s name from Nigeria’s history.
He said, “Nigeria would have been better because, at that time, it was a very special time in global times; that 1993 period was a time when the world itself was having an international economic boom.
“So, we could have tapped into that. But what did we get in return? We got a Kleptomaniac as head of state. I am not going to talk about (Sani) Abacha because he has his problems wherever he has found himself.
“I wrote a book in 2015 because I came to realise that my father’s name was becoming like a memory that was becoming distant and people were hellbent on rewriting the history of Nigeria without him.
“People would come from abroad, foreign presidents, they would mention Yar’Adua and others and they would not mention Chief MKO Abiola. Some people wanted to bury his name. Like my father would say: they wanted to shave his head in his absence.
“So, I now wrote a booReferringPresident Who Never Ruled’, so that his name cannot be forgotten.”
While referring to General Ibrahim Babangida’s book and his admission that Abiola won the 1993 election, Jamiu said, IBB mentioned that General Sani Abacha’s annulment of the election is all tales by moonlight.
He added, “Nothing stopped IBB from bringing up that when General Abacha died to General Abdulsalami who is also from Niger State and a good friend of his, to say: ‘I was forced to annul this election because General Abacha wanted to kill MKO Abiola. Now, MKO Abiola is in jail. Why don’t you release him to get a medical checkup as opposed to him eventually dying in jail?’
“Even if he didn’t tell Abdulsalami to de-annul the election, at least let him go to have a medical checkup and Abacha was dead. If Abacha was the problem, they could have come up with the result.
“This result that was announced in his book could have been announced when General Abdulsalami came into power and they could have allowed him to get a medical checkup. Maybe he would have survived.”