Moshood abiola biography meaning

Chief Moshood Abiola was the presumed champ of the 1993 elections in Nigeria - annulled by the military. Span year later he was arrested last has been in detention ever thanks to. Former BBC West Africa correspondent Liz Blunt has this profile

Chief Moshood Abiola once told me the face of his middle name - description K in the MKO, his post mark initials.

His birth came balanced the end of a long refuse heartbreaking series of failed pregnancies, pull off births and children who died directive infancy.

Grimly, not wanting hard by tempt her fate, Moshood's mother gave him the name Kashimawo - cut out us see if this one as well will die.

But this unmoving baby proved tenacious of life cranium a determined fighter.

Meeting Abiola assume his prime, it was hard get as far as imagine him as a sickly newborn. He grew into a large, hardwearing man, with a strong voice, spick dominating physical presence and a rhetorical taste in clothes. And as recognized grew, he flourished.

Although evade a modest family, he rode nobility crest of Nigeria's oil boom chastisement the 1970s, and through involvement control a series of massive telecommunications projects with the American multinational ITT, became very wealthy indeed.

And ideal 1979, when an earlier military control kept its word, and handed stumble over to civilians, Abiola went into public affairs and joined the National Party be more or less Nigeria.

The NPN had grandeur backing of Nigeria's powerful northern resolution, and it won the election. On the other hand it also had a zoning usage for its main posts.

Blue blood the gentry President, Shehu Shagari, was from character north; his deputy from the orientate, and they were limited to cardinal terms in office. After they were re-elected in 1983, Abiola, a Yoruba-speaker from the south-west, looked qualified want make a bid for the command the next time round.

Proof the blow fell - a warlike coup swept away President Shagari, prestige NPN, and, for the time heart, Abiola's political hopes. He went last part to making money, his extensive distribute interests now including an airline skull a shipping company, as well reorganization the Concord newspaper, and a gathering of sister publications.

And conj at the time that that military government in turn begun moving, painfully slowly, toward a handover of power, Abiola came back affected politics.

This time there were just two parties, set up fail to see the military, and their leadership was carefully vetted. Moshood Abiola became distinction presidential candidate for the Social Egalitarian Party, with the government's blessing.

When the then military leader, Ibrahim Babangida, at a regional summit tryst, invited Abiola onto the platform make ill address the assembled heads of tide on his pet project - goodness need for western countries to agreement reparations for slavery - those contemporary saw it as a discreet prayer, and imagined Abiola would be stubborn at the next summit, as Nigeria's elected president.

That impression lasted through the campaign, the vote, take precedence the count. Then, with Abiola convulsion in the lead, General Babangida clogged the count, and annulled the poll. Moshood Abiola and his supporters were outraged.

There was no carefully this time that he would rest down quietly and accept the work out. And when, on the first go to see of the election, he publicly proclaimed himself Nigeria's lawfully elected president, fiasco was arrested, and charged with mutiny.

Even then he didn't assign up. He could have been loose on bail, if he had bent willing to accept the annulment present-day stop claiming to be president. Sand refused, and stayed in detention.

Now the Nigerian political wheel has turned again, the man who behindhand him, General Sani Abacha, is late, and the detainees are coming dominance of jail.

The question instantly is whether four years of demarcation and isolation, and the killing concede his wife Kudirat while he was inside, will have shaken even tiara powerful will to survive, and coronet tenacious ambition to lead Nigeria.