A year later, Abiola claimed the presidency. Accused of treason, he was imprisoned. Abiola had been reported to be in ill health during his time in prison. In June, the U. He died on July 7, , in Abuja, Nigeria. He was 60 years old. Many Nigerians suspected foul play and refused to believe an official government statement declaring that Abiola died of cardiac arrest.
According to the U. He stepped down on the day before the new government took effect, handing power over to a preferred loyalist, Chief Shonekan. Nigerians supporting Abiola demanded that power be turned over to him as the rightful winner of the original election. That election was considered by many to have been the cleanest in Nigeria's history and was praised as a concerted effort to overcome ethnic and religious divisions throughout the country.
Olukoshi, a professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, commented on the election and the majority win by Abiola, saying "Abiola allowed us to rise above ethnic and religious differences … this was the first time a Yoruba has been able to win votes both in the east and the north.
Throughout August , Nigeria was paralyzed by strikes and unrest, and came almost to a standstill. Abiola remained abroad for several months, finally returning to Nigeria at the end of the year. Resentment against the military grew during the first part of During the constitutional conference of May 23, the Campaign for Democracy called for a boycott of elections, demanding that the military return power to Abiola, the presumed winner of the prior year elections.
On June 11, , after declaring himself to be president before a group of 3,, Abiola went into hiding.
He called for an uprising to force the military to recognize the vote. The military, conducting a nationwide hunt, arrested him on June The following day, 1, demonstrators marched on Lagos to demand Abiola's release. By July, a war of attrition by Nobel Prize winner, Wole Soyinka, was launched against the government. In response, the military charged Abiola with treason.
Soyinka, one of the driving forces behind Abiola, was forced to flee the country after being charged with treason. The oil workers went on a ten-day strike, crippling the nation's leading industry and bringing the country to an economic halt. Riots flared in Lagos and by the strike's third week, 20 people had been killed. By mid-August the strike had brought unrest to the northern and eastern part of the country as support for Abiola continued to increase.
Abacha responded by firing any high ranking military he thought were not loyal, then fired the heads of the state companies and their boards. Abacha eventually crushed the strike after nine weeks. He arrested any pro-democracy leaders that could be found. Abiola remained under arrest for four years, and was not allowed visits by either his family or personal physician. He was denied proper medical care, even after being examined by state-authorized doctors.
Abiola's daughter, Hofsad, said the family was allowed no contact during her father's four years in prison. On July 7, , only days before his scheduled release from prison, Abiola collapsed during a visit with a U. Religious and human rights activists from across the globe called for his release.
In June , General Abacha was found dead under mysterious circumstances. One month later, on the day that Abiola was to be released from prison, he met with a U.
During the July 7 meeting Abiola suddenly became ill, collapsed and later died in a hospital. Some claimed he had been poisoned by members of the U. Others said he had been beaten. Autopsy results showed he had died of massive heart failure. In an interview with Charles Stuart Kennedy in April , Thomas Pickering offered a first-hand account of the incident and its aftermath.
Please follow the links to learn more about Africa , political assassinations , or Thomas Pickering. In the spring of , as Under Secretary [for Political Affairs], I had planned a visit to Nigeria probably in early summer. I had applied for a visa, and General Sani Abacha, the last of the military coup guys, was still in charge. We were going out to see whether we could get the Nigerians to straighten up and behave or at least become more responsible. A General [Abdulsalami] Abubakar took over, a northerner, someone we had known, of good reputation.
It was obvious that the military had enough of Sani Abacha and his type and at last felt that it was time to straighten out and move toward elected civil government. We took that as a good signal and again we asked to come out, and in two months we went out with a visa…. He had, according to some vote counts, actually won the election and then been incarcerated by Abacha.
He was a Muslim from Lagos, a Yoruba, with a newspaper empire as well as other entrepreneurial adventures…. Sani Abacha had become president when he in effect stole the government after an election in which my friend Chief Abiola … had been elected. Chief Abiola was clamped into jail and spent four years there. We hoped we could use the meeting as a way to get him out of jail. His supporters were claiming that he was the legal and rightful president of Nigeria and this made the military just a little bit nervous and reluctant to move.
I think he was being held in somewhat gentler confinement than before. I went there with the ambassador, Bill Twaddell, and Susan. He and I had been, in a sense, co-victims of what we believed to be a Soviet- inspired disinformation plot in which the effort was to link him to me in an effort to use subversion to influence Nigerian domestic politics…[during the time that Pickering was ambassador in Nigeria,
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