Daily Independent Online.
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Friday, June 11, 2004.
Resign, Abiola’s wife tells
Obasanjo
By Sola Shittu
Reporter,
Ibadan
As the strike action called by the Nigeria
Labour Congress (NLC) runs into its second day on Thursday, one of the widows of Chief Moshood Abiola, the
acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993, polls, Mrs Teju Abiola, has called on
President Olusegun Obasanjo to resign and hand over to Vice-President Atiku
Abubakar.
Mrs Abiola, speaking with journalists at a
seminar on Sustaining Democracy Through Economic Empowerment, said the fact that
Obasanjo could jet out of the country in a crisis situation was an act of
irresponsibility and total disregard to the problem of the civil society.
“This is not what we sacrificed for;
we have paid the price of good governance in Nigeria and we must have it.
“That’s why I said Olusegun
Obasanjo must resign. He should resign and if he does not, we would march on
the National Assembly and impress it on them to impeach him,” she said.
Abiola, who is the executive director of
Democracy Sustenance Initiative (DSI), said she was ready to lay down her life
to achieve true democracy for Nigeria, saying, “You can only kill me, you
can’t kill the struggle.
“We are effectively still being run
by the military. It may in name be democratic but in actual practice, it is
military because it is only in a military situation that you can have your rights
trampled upon without the people in government thinking about it. I mean,
it’s a shame,” she said.
The lady activist, who was prevented by the
police from holding a similar seminar in Osogbo, Osun State capital, regretted
that the situation “we have in Nigeria now is contrary to the
expectations of the masses that had sacrificed their lives in the struggle for
the actualisation of democratic governance.”
“Look, my name is Teju Abiola, quote
me. We would make sure Obasanjo gets out of Aso Rock; we would march on the
National Assembly. Five years ago, we bought a tuber of yam for N50, now the
same tuber of yam costs N250. I may have the wherewithal to go abroad and take
my children with me, but I have paid the price in this country and so have so
many others.
“I don’t know of any Nigerian
except these people who cannot think, who are ignorant of their ignorance and
they cannot sit down and have people tutor them,” she said.
