Nigeria Without Abiola 
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1998 

NEWS ITEM: Nigeria's foremost political prisoner, and presumed winner of the 1993 Presidential Elections, Chief Mashood Abiola, died today following as diplomatic meeting in prison with US representatives. The Chief, a wealthy businessman, reportedly succumbed to a heart attack. 

Nigeria, the most populous country on the African Continent, rocked by recent death of President-General Sani Abacha, now reels at the stunning news that the imprisoned President elect, Chief Abiola, has also died. 

Nigerian sources say Abiola, jailed for the past 4 years on Abacha's orders, on the specious and untried charge of treason for daring to announce his victory at the pools, was a very sick man due, in large part, to the brutal conditions of the confinement. If US news sources are to be believed, sections of the former capital, Lagos, rioted hours after the news emerged of Abiola's fate. 

His loving and devoted daughters immediately announced their father had been poisoned by a vindictive military regime. 

Renowned writer and former political prisoner, Wole Soyinka, wrote a scathing attack on the Abacha regime, where he characterized the late military ruler as el "psychopath". He depicted Abiola as the quintessential politician, who, after speaking in support of the military government, was betrayed by it after his rising personal popularity threatened the military incumbency. In a Title that screamed his outrage at the regime, Soyinka chose The Open Sore of the [African] Continent to describe Nigeria. 

For millions of black folk in the so-called New World, Nigeria, as the ancient homeland of the Yoruba people, is a spiritual home of sorts, as Yoruban-influenced faiths in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Brazil and parts of the US stem from that rich, and fertile source. 

Abiola, as a Yoruban Muslim, seemed uniquely qualified to unite the Hausa North with the Yoruba South West, the huge nation's two largest ethnic groups. Abiola never got that chance, and Nigeria is the loser. 
Several years ago, the Chief's senior wife, Alhanja Kudirat Abiola, was hot to death in her car at a busy intersection in Lagos. The car was not stolen, showing this wasn't a robbery, but an execution. She once served as one of the Chief's most outspoken defenders. 

Soyinka, writing of the military's annulment of the elections of June 23, 1993, described the action as a "rape" of Nigerian polity. He wrote of a culture of terror that descended over the land, of what were essentially government paid, military gangs that slew its citizenry with impunity. 

Himself a political prisoner of the regime, he wrote of the savage omnipresence of a military regime that literally, psychologically, and culturally beat the people in a misplaced attempt to "dicipline" her restless and outraged intellectuals. 

The loss of Abiola then, is more than a Nigerian loss, or an African loss, It is a global loss. 

© MAJ 1998