Jamiu Abiola, son of the late Chief MKO Abiola, has said Nigeria lost a critical chance for economic transformation when the 1993 presidential election, widely believed to have been won by his father, was annulled.
Speaking during Channels Television’s June 12 Special Forum on Thursday—held to commemorate 26 years of uninterrupted democratic rule—Jamiu described the annulment as a national tragedy that cost Nigeria valuable progress during a global economic boom.
“Nigeria would have been better because, at that time, it was a very special period globally,” he said. “That 1993 period was when the world itself was experiencing an international economic boom. We could have tapped into that.”
Instead, he lamented, the nation was handed what he described as a kleptocratic leadership. Without directly naming names, he criticized the leadership that followed, making veiled references to General Sani Abacha’s regime. “We got a kleptomaniac as head of state,” Jamiu stated. “I am not going to talk about Abacha because he has his problems wherever he has found himself.”
Jamiu, who currently serves as Senior Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Linguistics and Foreign Affairs, also expressed deep concern about what he sees as a systematic attempt to erase his father’s role from Nigeria’s democratic journey.
“I wrote a book in 2015 because I realised that my father’s name was becoming like a distant memory, and some were hellbent on rewriting Nigeria’s history without him,” he said. “Foreign presidents would come and mention Yar’Adua and others, but not Chief MKO Abiola. Like my father would say, they wanted to shave his head in his absence.”
His book, The President Who Never Ruled, was written to immortalise MKO Abiola’s democratic legacy and ensure future generations understand his pivotal place in the nation’s history.
Chief MKO Abiola, who won the annulled June 12, 1993 election, is widely regarded as a symbol of Nigeria’s democratic struggle. In 2018, former President Muhammadu Buhari posthumously honoured him with the Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) and declared June 12 as Nigeria’s official Democracy Day—a move that was praised across political divides as long overdue.
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