Kola Abiola, the oldest son of late MKO Abiola revealed how he had tried on 3 separate occasions to get former President Goodluck Jonathan to honour his father with the Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR) title
Abiola who was speaking on a programme titled, ‘Question Time’, which aired on ChannelsTelevision, said that due to political reasons, it wasn’t done.
He chronicled his attempts to get his father, stating that he initially started with the then Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke (SAN) and instead they were awarded a gold award which the family promptly refused.
For Abiola’s second attempt, he wrote a letter to Jonathan through the Serving Overseer of the Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, but that didn’t work either as nothing was done.
This had been before Jonathan left office and even when he was at the tail end of his tenure, Abiola tried once more saying;
“Towards the election, I approached them again, this time in writing, and solicited the help of Pastor Bakare and told them that even if it was for selfish political reasons, this was something you could do to help your chances of winning elections.
“I really didn’t mind how he got it done. But we couldn’t get President Jonathan to get it done so we left that.
“After he lost the election, I approached him a second time also through the same Pastor Bakare to try to get him to do this as a legacy of his Presidency, something that Nigerians would never forget about him. Last minute, we couldn’t get it to happen.”
He said he talked to Buhari who was way more open to the idea and he did something about it not only awarding him with the GCFR title, but also giving the family an official apology.
He went on to praise Buhari saying; “For me, Mr. President has done undoubtedly what no one was capable of doing and that apology given not just to my father but to Gani Fawehinmi’s family was more than what I bargained for when I was pushing for this.”