Jamiu, one of the late MKO Abiola‘s children, has revealed how his family was forced to undergo Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) tests following Abiola’s death.
According to Jamiu, the decision was made in response to the move to share Abiola’s assets following his death in an attempt to reclaim his mandate in 1998.
Remember that the presidential election, thought to have been won by Abiola on June 12, 1993, was annulled by the then-military government.
In an interview with Vanguard, Jamiu revealed that it was discovered after the test that some of the children were not Abiola’s.
He said;
Most of what you have heard is true. When it rains it pours and this is what further exacerbated the tragedy. DNA tests were conducted but this issue was deliberately mishandled to divert attention from my father’s assets.
The fact that some had failed the DNA test should never have been published in newspapers. So, there were court cases later used as excuses for stalling the sharing of my father’s assets or diverting their proceeds to fictitious legal charges.
The fact that all of this was happening just a few years after my father died was a great disservice to his memory and legacy.
But this is in line with something God Himself had mentioned in the Koran when he stated that among our family members, some might be our enemies.
It is a lesson from which many people, old and young, should learn. To make matters worse, those who took over his assets have even refused to maintain the house in which he was buried, even though it will not cost more than a tiny fraction of their loot.
Speaking on how his father’s business fared after his father’s death, he said;
My father had flourishing businesses, but some of them were grounded by the government when he became its enemy even before he had the mandate to reclaim them.
The government refused to pay him the monies owed. There was a day I went to his room even before the June 12 election and found him upset.
He then told me that he had gone to Abuja several times to get various payments that had been long overdue but were denied. When I asked why, his response was, “They are worried that the more I have, the more powerful I will become.” However, his assets were still there.
Neither did he sell them nor use them to borrow money before he died. This does not mean that he is also not partly to blame for the failure of his businesses. As you probably know, he was a generous man and, contrary to what many people believe, he was not in any way materialistic at all.
With time, money became nothing to him, so his businesses gradually became channels for charity and not-for-profit. This is not how an entrepreneur should think, and certainly.
That was not how he used to think before becoming a billionaire. His business empire crumbled partly because that was the aim of the military government and also partly because his own priorities had changed when he made up his mind to give all he had to people in need all over the world. He rarely had time to run his businesses.