NADECO Recounts How Abiola Beat Abacha’s Security

Nineteen years after the death of the acclaimed winner of June 12, 1993 election, Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, the defunct National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) has revealed how he escaped the security cordon of the then Head of State, the late General Sani Abacha, to declare himself president on June 11, 1994.

NADECO was formed by some politicians and rights activists to campaign for the actualisation of the presidential mandate believed to have been given to the late Abiola before the then military President Ibrahim Babangida annulled the election, setting off a chain of reactions that eventually culminated in the return of democracy in 1999 after Abacha’s death.

Speaking Tuesday during the 19th year anniversary colloquium organised to commemorate the historic declaration at Epetedo, Lagos, NADECO Secretary, Chief Ayo Opadokun, said while security operatives were expecting the declaration to coincide with the first anniversary of the June 12 annulment, Abiola carried out the action a day earlier.

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the annulled election Wednesday, some states in the South-west, including Lagos, Osun and Ogun have declared the day a public holiday.

According to Opadokun, the decision to do the declaration a day earlier was at the instance of some of the late Abiola’s supporters who prevailed on the late Archbishop of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), Bishop Abiodun Adetiloye, to advise the deceased not to do the declaration on a Sunday.

He said: “Abiola wanted to make the declaration on June 12, 1994 but it was a Sunday; so some of us said since it was on a Sunday, Christians who were his supporters would not turn out so we devised a method to dissuade him.”

Aside the possibility of the late Abiola’s Christian supporters not attending the event, Opadokun added that the deceased and NADECO were aware that the Abacha government had put in place watertight security in Lagos State to prevent such a declaration.

“We were aware that the government had got wind of our programme, so we contacted the late Anglican archbishop who wrote a letter of appeal to Abiola to drop the move on Sunday. When Abiola got it, he respected the wish of the bishop and he shelved the idea,” Opadokun explained.