The June 12th alliance of human rights and pro democracy advocates was made up of a diverse coalition held together by the personality and indomitable will of Kudirat Abiola. When others spoke the language of accommodation, she refused to compromise. She would not join with those who wished to persuade Chief Abiola to abandon the mandate that the people had given him. Although the government refused to allow her to see or talk to her husband throughout his incarceration, Kudirat remained steadfast and outspoken on behalf of June 12th and against Abacha’s increasing abrogation of human rights.
Kudirat did not believe that anyone should remain on the side lines in the fight for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria. She constantly reminded my colleagues and me that there was no room for diplomatic neutrality in dealing with the Abacha government. She urged those of us who had taken measures against the regime to strengthen our sanctions. She inveighed against those countries which she thought were giving aid and comfort to the military clique. She believed her husband to be the rightful President of the country and she acted as if she were both his Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs.
On the one occasion when I was allowed to visit her incarcerated husband I carried her greetings to him and told him of his efforts on his behalf. I later reported back to her on his condition and his gratitude to her for keeping up the struggle to free him.
There are a few events in one’s lifetime so seared in memory that you forever remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when the news of its happening reached you. So it was for me on June 4, 2006. I was in my office preparing to leave for a meeting when an aide ran in excitedly, the blood drained from his face to tell me that he had just received a call that Kudirat Abiola had been assassinated. I was standing and my knees buckled. Kudirat had been at my home just two days before meeting with the State Department official in charge of human rights. We had planned to meet again that week to follow up on our discussions.
I had never underestimated the lengths to which Abacha and his security operatives led by Hamza al-Mustafa would go. But this killing seemed beyond the pale even for them. They may have slain the symbol but the cause of June 12th lived on. It must never be forgotten lest the liberties for which Moshood and Kudirat Abiola lived and died be once again swept away.
On returning to the United States in October 1997, my first public act was to testify in favor of the street corner in front of the Nigerian Consulate and Mission to the United Nations being named for Kudirat Abiola. Here is what I told my fellow Americans about one of the greatest of Africa’s daughters:
IN SUPPORT OF THE NAMING OF KUDIRAT CORNER
Testimony before a committee of the
New York City Council by
WALTER C. CARRINGTON
Former United States Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Nigeria
New York City, October 25, 1997
Mr. Chairman, I have just returned from four years service as the American Ambassador to Nigeria. In appearing here today I wish to emphasize that I do so in my private capacity as a former diplomat and not in any way as a spokesman for the State Department or the United States Government.
In Nigeria, as in much of Africa, there is a tradition of returning to your native village after experiencing and benefiting from what the outside world has to offer. There you are expected to build a great house, a school or a hospital and to offer the wisdom of your experience to see that justice is done. It is in that African spirit that I return to the city of my birth to add my voice to those who would honor the memory of her whom I described at the American Embassy=s 1996 July 4th Reception as Athe bravest, most uncompromising woman Africa=s human rights struggle has known.@
Moshood Abiola was jailed in 1994 for claiming the Presidency to which the people of Nigeria had elected him a year earlier in what was described by independent international observers as Athe freest and fairest@ in the country=s history. His senior wife, Kudirat, immediately took up the leadership of the struggle, not only to free her husband from jail but to free all Nigerians from the jackboot of military rule. Kudirat was the opposition leader the Abacha regime most feared. She was indefatigable in her efforts to unite all those who fought for a return to democracy in Africa=s largest and potentially richest country. And for that, I am convinced that she was assassinated by agents of the military government.
Kudirat Abiola was in my office just a few days before she was murdered. She had come to meet with John Shattuck, the State Department official in charge of Human Rights. She came to my home the next day to press again her case with Shattuck for stronger United States sanctions. Kudirat never missed a chance to press her case and never accepted diplomatic excuses as to why more could not be done right away. As I stood with her in the driveway of the Embassy Residence bidding her goodbye, little could she or I dream that we would saying goodbye to each other for the last time. 48 hours later she was gunned down on the streets of Lagos while on her way to carry her crusade to the Canadian Embassy.
I am proud that the American Embassy, representing the highest values of the American people, never flinched from our responsibility to maintain as close a contact with the opposition as we did with the government to which we were accredited. We reported as faithfully as we could the events which were going on the country. We were mostly observers of the continual violations of human rights that were reported to us. That all changed on the night of September 18th this year, when in violation of all known diplomatic practice, an elite combined police and military unit known as Operation Sweep, smashed through thick iron gates and stormed into a farewell party organized in my honor by the human rights groups whom Kudirat Abiola championed, and ordered at gun point all to disperse including ambassadors from several embassies. They threatened to shoot the speaker who was making the welcoming address unless he dropped the microphone. A threat that well might have been directed at me had they arrived but a few minutes later because he would have by then handed the microphone to me to make my farewell address. I experienced firsthand that night the indignities that are a regular occurrence for the brave journalists and human rights advocates who continually speak up for the freedom of the Nigerian people.
I remember, as an active member of the Free South Africa Support Movement, how thrilled I was when New York City payed eloquent tribute to the living symbols of the anti-apartheid struggle, Nelson and Willie Mandela, by naming the street in front of the South African Mission for them. No greater boost to the morale of all who yearn for freedom in Nigeria could be given by the people of New York than to name the street in front of Nigeria House for their dead heroine, their symbol of the struggle against military dictatorship C Kudirat Abiola.