Notable pro-democracy activist, Chief Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has described Bashorun MKO Abiola’s running mate in the June 12, 1993 election, Amb. Babagana Kingibe, as a traitor who does not deserve the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) honour handed him on Tuesday.
Agbakoba, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), made this known in an interview with The Punch published on Saturday.
Going back memory lane, the respected lawyer queried why Kingibe accepted the position of Foreign Minister from the Gen. Sani Abacha junta when Abiola was still fighting to reclaim their joint mandate.
Agbakoba said, “He is a traitor; he is a big time traitor. I warned Abiola. Abiola didn’t listen to us, that was the problem. If he had listened to us, he would have been the president. We said this guy, we were not sure about him o. But Abiola is also at fault because he was so driven to become president that he lost sight of some very fundamental points. Then, he made a mistake of not following the advice of the pro-democracy community, Rather, he was listening to the politicians who wanted to be ministers. That was all they wanted. So having failed to follow advice, he very quickly fell into many errors, the first being that he now kowtowed to Abacha. There was a very nasty picture of him stretching across the chair to Abacha when Abacha was talking to him. It was very-very degrading to the point where he was not able to see that the northern emirs would not support him. He kept saying oh, they are my friends, I know them very well. And in my presence, he phoned Babangida, they put him on hold. He was shocked. He didn’t get to speak to Babangida. It was Kudirat who had a great sense of decency; Abiola was a bit a too ambitious in wanting to become president. He went to Aso Rock to meet with Babangida in the course of which Babangida’s wife and Kudirat started fighting. It led to a fight. Babangida and other people had to rush out to separate them. My point is that Abiola really failed to see some of the pitfalls. I had meetings with Kingibe to say ‘don’t you think that being appointed foreign minister under Abacha’s government when the mandate was still alive and being pushed for, betrayed the mandate?’ He tried to justify it by saying it was Abiola who caused it. He said Abiola was not communicating with him, strategy, what to do, blah blah blah. So (he) said okay, ‘if Abiola himself has virtually rubbished the mandate, then why would he be fighting for it?’ Those are the circumstances under which he took the appointment. I said ‘I don’t think anything justifies it, I think you should have stood by the mandate notwithstanding what Abiola did. But you see, the irony today is that he is benefitting from something he did not fight for even for one day. That is the irony of life. He didn’t fight for it for one day, but well, he is entitled since he was Abiola’s running mate.”
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