KUDIRAT ABIOLA - A VIEW FROM A DISTANCE by SANUSI LAMIDO SANUSI

I saw Kudirat Abiola in person only once in my life and it was not at a political function. As a young employee of a merchant bank in Lagos in the late 1980s, I lived with my family in a rented flat on Abiola Crescent, Ikeja,
a short walk from the Abiola Household. On a certain Friday on which I did not go to work, (perhaps a public holiday), I prayed at the Abiola mosque and after prayers my wife pointed Kudirat out to me. She was organizing the distribution of food and alms to worshippers. My wife told me it was a weekly ritual. This was long before her husband, the late M.K.O. Abiola, started his campaign for the presidency.
But the most distinct memory I have of Kudirat is not visual. I remember more than anything else her numerous interview with the Hausa service of the BBC when her husband was in detention. I remember in particular, an interview at the height of the campaign for the restoration of the mandate, a pint at which the country was becoming polarized along ethnic lines, with politicians on both sides of the Niger turning June 12 into a cause celebre for ethnic chauvinism. That evening, Kudirat was asked if she blamed northerners for the annulment of the June 12 election.
In response, she said only an unjust and ungrateful person would blame northerners for the plight of her husband. Abiola had the votes of all Nigerians, and had won resoundingly in the north. She argued that there was one man and one man only to blame, General Babangida, who although a Muslim, had refused to accept that God alone gives power and authority. She then proceeded to quote directly from the Qur’an the verses in Chapter 3 beginning with “Say: O God, You are the possessor of all authority…”.
I remember being struck by the profundity of her thought and the presence of her mind. How many people, faced with a personal setback, still ensure that they do not exceed the bounds of just reaction? More important, in that one interview Kudirat spoke the minds of all patriotic Nigerians. She said, in effect, ‘‘my husband did not seek election on an ethnic platform, and I will not reduce his struggle to a parochial one’’. She said to those who wanted to ride on the back of her family’s travails: ‘‘It is not which part of the country a person comes from that matters, but what he has to offer the nation’’. It is a lesson that was, alas, lost to many. Now we know, five years after the return of democracy, that a bad government is a bad government irrespective of the ethno-religious affiliation of the president. But have we really learnt this lesson, when we are still talking about purpose in itself? That is the same clique that, over and over again, passes the baton from one of its members to another, perhaps professing a different faith or speaking a different mother tongue, but nonetheless bred and weaned on the same culture of theft and incompetence?
Kudirat Abiola died under a hail of bullets. Many there are who say she made the ultimate sacrifice for her husband, like the wife of Ahmadu Bello who stood by and was shot dead along with him. I say Kudirat died for Nigeria. She died fighting for her husband’s mandate, for what she was convinced was a just cause. But she died, importantly, preaching the message of national unity. Perhaps her upbringing in the north and her close contact with her cosmopolitan, detribalized husband left their mark on her. Whatever the influences, the exact nature of which I cannot possibly know, Kudirat was a Nigerian to the core, who believed in this country until her death.
As for those who had her blood on their hands it is sufficient comfort that every human being must go where she went. Everyone, the murderer and the murdered, will die in due course. And, being a Muslim, Kudirat would say ever one shall stand before one God and account for things done in this world.
May her gentle soul rest in peace, and may Allah accept her, and her husband, into al-Jannah. Amin.
* Alhaji Lamido, Harvard trained policy analyst, former Central Bank Governor and a member of the Board of KIND is Emir of Kano.