In our society, there are several ways of shouting ‘Ye’. If you said ‘Ye!’ people would run. If you say ‘Ye, ye ye’ they would dance. It’s the same Ye, we can still say what you want to say, which is the truth, without ruffling anybody’s feathers. It is a matter of presentation. And as far as I am concerned, a military government is not an ideal government to have.
I like that audio clip that you just heard. And it’s not just because M. K. O. Abiola is singing ‘Ye’ years before Burna Boy’s song. I like it because it was a moment that really captured who MKO was and why he was endearing to so many people.
The clip is from a video interview MKO gave the Nigerian television channel, TVC, in 1993. In the video, he is sitting in a leather chair, wearing a blue lace agbada. He looks so confident. He has the demeanor of a man who is sure of his ability to bring democracy to Nigeria after over ten years of military dictatorships.
Despite MKO’s ties to the military, interviews like this (and he did several) suggest that he wanted a democratic Nigeria. MKO had a very humble background but aspired to greatness from early on. He would first try to run for president in 1983, only to fail early on in the race. In this way, running for president in June 12 1993 was a kind of return of the Mack for MKO. Given the scale of his achievements, it’s tempting to venerate MKO to legend status. But at the core of his mythic personality, he was a regular man. His daughter, Saratu, who was a child during much of his campaigning in the 90s, shared what it was like to grow up with him as her dad.
Saratu Abiola: And he’s this lionized figure and you get that sense even as a very young child that he’s almost not human. He’s just this giant of a person. But he’s also the person that you sit on his knee whenever he comes by and talk about your day. He is your dad. And when you’re someone who is seen, to give and give and give you take on the very shape of people’s needs.
I believe that the circumstances of our births influence our lives in one way or another. Because of that, I’ve always valued Yoruba naming customs. In Yoruba societies, twins are called Taiwo and Kehinde; but while the name Taiwo given to the first-born twin means the ‘first to taste the world’, according to Yoruba belief, Kehinde, the second-born twin is actually, the elder.
Yoruba people believe that Kehinde sent Taiwo into the world first to taste it, to see whether it is fitting for Kehinde—the more tactile and cautious twin.
MKO’s full name was Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. In Yoruba, Ka-shi-ma-wo means, ‘Let us wait and see’ and MKO bore that name as a totem during his adolescence. His name was a reminder of the circumstances surrounding his birth. MKO was the 23rd child of his parents but the first child to actually make it past infancy. It wasn’t until he was 15 and the anxiety of childhood death had drifted away that his parents gave him the name, ‘Moshood’. They waited and it seemed this child would stay. He would live. From MKO’s childhood, the die had already been cast: he was an outlier and so he had to make something of his life. In a 2019 interview with Arise News, his daughter, Tundun, explained this further.
Tundun Abiola: He was determined, he felt quite clearly that this was what he was born to do. He reminded us that his parents lost 23 children and that he was the one who survived. And he was called Kashimawo, and he really thought that he was a man of destiny and this is why God gave him all the wealth that he had and it was for this purpose and he was going to do it. And there was the whole Aare-ona-kan-kan-fo, the whole generalissimo for the Yoruba tribe; he took it very seriously and was not going to listen to anyone who tried to prevail over him with common sense.
MKO’s story reminds me of the Alexander Hamilton musical by Lin Manuel Miranda. In MKO’s case, though, we’d substitute the infidelity in Miranda’s musical with polygamy and allegations of corruption. Ultimately, both stories are very identical stories; stories about men who started life down on their luck, pulled themselves up and altered the histories of their countries. Here’s a line from the musical that I often think about:
Alexander Hamilton: What if this bullet is my legacy. Legacy. What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.
Hello and welcome to The Republic, a podcast about pivotal African figures and historical events. I’m your host, Wale Lawal. Over the next six episodes, I’m going to walk you through one of the most significant events in Nigeria’s political history. The June 12 1993 presidential election shaped the modern Nigerian state. But, why was it so controversial? Who were the main actors and what roles did they play? Most importantly, can we draw any parallels between then and now?
MKO’s legacy in Nigeria is a complex one: it is a tapestry of luck, hope, discipline, betrayal and destiny but underneath that tapestry lies a number of questions. The biggest one is why did such a wealthy man decide to run for president?
EPISODE 2: MKO, THE MAN NIGERIA WAITED TO SEE
How does a poor, quote—unquote nameless son of a cocoa trader born in the old Yoruba city of Abeokuta go on to become the almost president of Nigeria? Some may say grit.
Kola Abiola: MKO, started off very humble, very humble beginnings. I can remember us going to Lagos State staff school. My mother was teaching textile design at Yaba tech. We would always walk from school to join her at Yaba tech before we go home. Contrary to the stereotype, we did a lot of crawling before we started walking.
That was MKO’s son, Kola. MKO was born into a poor family in 1937; both his parents were traders. His dad sold cocoa and his mum sold kola nuts. As the first child in a poor family in the 40s, MKO began helping his father with his cocoa sales from as young as nine. And when his father’s business hit a tough time little MKO had to step up again and start his own business selling firewood alongside going to school. Still, according to numerous sources, MKO was a good student. He started off primary school at African Central School, Abeokuta and then went to Baptist Boys High School Abeokuta. Many boys that went to Baptist Boys High School eventually became notable figures in Nigeria’s history. The school’s alumni include Obafemi Awolowo, who became the premier of Nigeria’s Western Region; Thomas Adeoye Lambo, who is credited as the first western-trained psychiatrist in Nigeria; Onaolapo Soleye who was Minister of Finance under General Muhammadu Buhari’s military regime; and Olusegun Obasanjo, our two-time head of state.
Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1977: This military government is convinced that we must produce what we need, we must curtail our appetites for what we do not produce.
The clip you’ve just heard is of Obasanjo during his military regime in 1977. Obasanjo’s and MKO’s paths were inextricably linked, especially because of their similarities: both young men had ties to Abeokuta and big dreams that would take them beyond the ancient city.
As young boys, they both served on the editorial team of their secondary school’s magazine, The Trumpeter. MKO was the editor and Obasanjo was his deputy. As men, they moved within the same socio-political circles. Over the years, there has been great speculation about their relationship with some going as far as calling them ‘enemies’.
Mohammed Fawehinmi: Obasanjo hates Abiola, not just from secondary school even into the grave.
Those were pretty strong words from Mohammed Fawehinmi, a lawyer and the son of the publisher Gani Fawehinmi, in an interview in 2018, after President Buhari announced June 12 as democracy day. Until he died in 2021, Mohammed had been a champion of affirming MKO’s political legacy in Nigeria. He was also a staunch critic of Obasanjo for not properly commemorating June 12 during his eight-year tenure as democratic president. Rotimi Fasakin, a former chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, confirmed the friction between MKO and Obasanjo in a 2018 interview with Channels Television.
Rotimi Fasakin: I remember what Chief, General, Dr, ex president Olusegun Obasanjo said then, in far away Zimbabwe that Abiola is not the Messiah that you all think, because he was my classmate. And I remember then that later on as part of mediatory work the then Archbishop Desmond Tutu came in from South Africa and the government arranged for him to see Abiola in incarceration and Obasanjo went with him. The newspaper reported that it was a very riotous time. Because the president elect confronted him. That you went ahead telling everybody that you were my classmate but you were actually my junior.
MKO’s political inclinations did not just suddenly appear when he ran for president in 1992. His desires for political participation and civic involvement can be traced all the way back to his teenage years. As a 19-year-old, MKO had strong nationalist zeal and joined the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons or ‘NCNC’, the party formed by Herbert Macaulay in 1944.
MKO joining NCNC is a vital piece of information because the other viable party at the time was Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group. Action Group was essentially the formalization of the Yoruba political society, ‘Egbe Omo Oduduwa’. The party was ideologically socialist and was founded to serve as the platform for realizing Awolowo’s preliminary objective of mobilizing Western Nigerians to forestall NCNC’s control of the Western Region.
Before 1951, NCNC was the only national party in Nigeria. It won the Eastern regional seats in 1951 and also won the 5 Lagos seats in the Western Regional House of Assembly. Here’s Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, then the Premier of Nigeria’s Eastern Region, at an NCNC rally around 1959.
Nndamdi Azikiwe: In the words of one of the greatest men produced by the world, ‘we have been waging this struggle for charity for all and malice towards none.’ It makes no difference to me really whether I win this election or not. I want you to believe me and I am not talking politics. For 25 years of my life, I fought for the freedom of Nigeria. Nigeria will attain independence on 1 October 1960, so it makes no difference to me whether I or the Sardauna, or Tafawa Balewa of Chief Awolowo or myself will become the first Prime Minister. As long as Nigeria is free. I will be satisfied.
NCNC was an interesting party made up of several radical organizations that had emerged during the Second World War. The party began as a movement rather than a political party; between 1944 and 1951 it was pretty much a loose federation of diverse organizations including nationalist parties like the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), cultural associations, and labour movements.
When MKO joined NCNC, the party’s leadership was very diverse—at least ethnically. Nigeria’s first president Nnamdi Azikiwe was the party president, J. O. Fadahunsi who was Yoruba, was the first National Vice-President, Eyo Ita who was Ibibio-Efik was the First National Deputy President. NCNC also had a Sierra Leonean National Secretary in F.S McEwen and a Ghanaian National Auditor in A. K. Blankson. Despite this diversity, NCNC was tagged ‘the Igbo party’.
MKO’s first big break came in 1958 when he got a scholarship to the University of Glasgow to study Accounting. At the time, MKO had been working at Barclays Bank in Ibadan and would often shuttle weekly between Ibadan and Abeokuta to see his family. By now, MKO was around 21, his father was in his late sixties and his mother had died. As the eldest child, he was now the primary breadwinner.
MKO spent five eventful years abroad. He graduated from the University of Glasgow and then from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. In 1960, MKO married Simbiat, his first wife and had his first child Kola in 1962. MKO would later go on to have several more wives and even more children. As of 1982, he had six wives and claimed to have 25 children in an
interview with Punch Newspapers.
When we think about MKO, we often only look through political and economic lenses; but who was he beyond campaign speeches, rhetoric and statistical variables? During my research for this podcast, Saratu told me that with a father like MKO, she inevitably felt like she was sharing him with Nigeria.
Narrator Wale Lawal: What was he like? Obviously, I mean, I wasn’t born. I was maybe like one at the time. But I will still say like to the rest of us Nigerians, he was this big, powering well-known figure. Saratu Abiola: I remember him as this person that would come by, we didn’t live in the main house, we lived outside of the main house, and he’ll come to visit. And he would carry me and we have just the most everyday conversations that I would assume people always have with parents. Tell me about school, tell me about your friends. And we would kind of just hang out. I think part of the reason why even as a child I hated the way that it would be…is because I wanted to hold on to that. Even then I wanted to hold on to that slice of normalcy, because it was the only thing that felt normal, and everything else felt overwhelming and crazy. So I was trying to hold on to that everydayness because I have to say, the reality of it is very normal for you know, your average… I guess in a lot of polygamous home, your main relationships are with the mothers and then your dad is this tiring figure out who’s, just he’s there but he’s not your primary relationship.
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