At the end of the passageway are portraits of Kudirat Abiola, MKO's wife. She was murdered by the military government's assassins in 1996. I remember hearing the news that she had been shot and was in emergency surgery on the radio as my friends and I were preparing for our school certificate exams. Later on the announcer said she had died due to wounds sustained in the cranium. It was highly uncertain times in Nigeria during the rule of the military. You always turned on the radio awaiting news of who had been shot or arrested. Public dissent was stifled and anyone could be the next to be invited "for discussions" at the office of the State Security Services. We lived in fear.
The Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) was founded by her daughter Hafsat to keep alive the heroine's ideals.
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| A biography of Ralph Bunche sits on one of the numerous bookshelves in the Abiola home. Less visible is one of Malcolm X and another report on state-sponsored violence in Nigeria. I believe they are not his as some of the titles were published after his death. |
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