In Memory of MKO Abiola: The Benefactor of Democracy And Benefactors of His Life, Times And Tides
By Taiye Olaniyi
Sanity is yet restored nor installed as ideal democratic practices or how do you explain what is going on in the electioneering, legislative, executive and judicial arms of government today?
The beneficiaries of the fallouts of June 12 stare us in the face with undeserved affluence that stinks and filthy in accumulation of mansions, luxurious cars and wristwatches.
Thank God that former President Muhammadu Buhari has now honoured M.K.O Abiola by declaring June 12 as Democracy Day.
Greater honour at immortalising this great man and the course he fought was pursued by Ogbeni Goke Odeyinka, who with people of like minds once arranged a reunion of journalists of Concord Newspaper stable and which included a couple of us friends, of his good aspirations to a testimonial in memory of Basorun Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola being a benefactor in the penumbra of life and events.
Life, like the hemispheres has dual phases, what opens to someone somewhere may be dead close to another somewhere else.
Proximity is so vital in media reportage, as the Americans were moaning about the bombing of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, also, on September 11, 2015, in Nigeria at the Oranmiyan Hall of the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, a re-union dinner was held in honour of former staff of the stable of Concord Press of Nigeria Limited thus re-enacting both the sweet and bitter memories of late Chief Moshood Kashimowo Abiola, a president Nigeria ought to have but never had due to an annulment of an election regarded as the first and popularly acclaimed Nigeria's only free and fair election.
I remember as if it were yesterday that a re-union of at least 60 per cent of the 207 staff listed in the programme by Ogbeni Goke Odeyinka planning committee also had in attendance the family members of M.K.O Abiola including Dr. (Mrs) Hamidat Doyinsola Abiola, Kola and Deji Abiola as close family members aside other prominent Nigerians that made the occasion very electrifying way back in 2015.
This writer was not and is still not as much concerned about honouring the honourees but about the life and time of a great man who from the subcrustal layers of parental family background carved a niche of being his father's 23rd child but the first to survive infancy, hence, the name Kashimawo the Yoruba signification for "Let us wait and see," kind of a doubtful hope of his survival.
The man survived to battle and wriggle with poverty not only to make survival a singular form but to help raise his siblings while he partook in education, attaining several firsts in areas of academic, business and finally into political realms where his first in everything met the grace turned to grass and eventual grave.
Call the emergence of such a miniature human meteor radiating light, giving succour to the poor, advancing the frontier of religion though in Islam, yet advancing his support to other religions. He was a doyen of sports, music maestro, polygamist of certain order, friend of the military and friend of the poor whose story of life summarises every mortal in "Confluence of Ironies."
So connected was he but yet disconnected by those who knew him best and drove him down the alley of no point of return.
I was once privileged to be in physical contact with Bashorun Abiola when inside the Telephone Exchange in Akure in 1986 after the commissioning of the Exchange by the then Head of State, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the former Commander-In-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces.
The second encounter was my humble letter to him on 12th June 1990 humbly suggesting to him to stop an Islamic program he was sponsoring on the Nigerian Television Authority or the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, B.C.O.S in Ibadan because the Islamic scholar in question was so egoistic as such not projecting Islam in good light thus negating the good intentions Bashorun Mashood Kashimowo Abiola might have had then. Thanks to God the programme came to an abrupt end.
However, without any apology to anyone, being one of those people of like minds that vehemently opposed the renaming of the University of Lagos after M.K.O courtesy of the Alumni Facebook platform, "UNILAG FOREVER." This was not because of any iota of hatred for Chief M.K.O Abiola but just that the "University of Lagos" must and should remain the name by which heaven and earth must know our alma mater, all of us Great Akokites!
The spirit of democracy by which Bashorun Moshood Abiola lived and died shall remain not only monumental but his person and personality justify more encomiums beyond being given a posthumous award of GCFR as his son Kola Abiola intoned at the occasion as a life dream and pursuit in aspiration.
Bashorun Abiola was an enigma, a colossus that in heart and mind demonstrated his expanse of kindness and goodwill to the poor Nigerians than converting the commonwealth to be only bedecked in robes emanating from wardrobes where garments of conscience and service to God and fellow Nigerians are daily being interred by the inheritors and beneficiaries of what he stood and died for.
Yes, Dr (Mrs) Doyinsola Abiola despite being a voracious and avid reader of innumerable books, even then as a member of Patito Gang, while still concerned about how to make best of visible and glaring evidences of bad situations in Nigeria, solicited for "Hearts Unafraid" to help build a virile nation from the economic morass and moral decay that corruption is daily sinking us into.
According to her, even daily has the problem of immigrants, the Northeast, already a hotbed of displacement and geographic zone of commotions and theatre of war grown beyond imagination.
As it was in previous administration's both of the military and civilian regimes, Nigerians today need ample deployment of sincerity of mind and active engagement of honest dealings in the arduous task of nation-building. Our democracy should not go in disarray and so from innumerable recesses in which many now sleep to stupor and slumber in unimaginable affluence, I remind us of our primary school rhymes of our public school of glorious days in Nigeria, "O every sleeper wake up, the Sun is on the sky......." We all need to make hay now that the sun still shines.
As Benjamin Franklin aptly advised, "Whatsoever thou resolveth to do, do it now. Defer not till evening what the morning can accomplish."
Have Nigerians learned any lesson from the life, time and the transition of Abiola and should we?
The prayer is may the Divine Light unite us to Life and may Light, Life and Love reunite us back to God the Creator of every living being everywhere as we now loiter and wriggle in search of true democracy and the Nigerian nationhood.
Taiye Olaniyi, a retired Postman of the Nigeria Postal Service, is based in Lagos.