By Toye Olori
LAGOS, Jun 4 1999 (IPS)

Rights groups in Nigeria Friday held a procession in the commercial city of Lagos to remember Kudirat, the slain wife of the late Moshood Abiola, the presumed winner of the 1993 Presidential election.

Kudirat was killed by an assassin’s bullets on June 4, 1996 at Oregun, a suburb of Lagos, for her insistence on the release of her husband and the recognition of his Presidential mandate.

Abiola was detained by the late Nigerian dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, for proclaiming himself President on the eve of the first anniversary of his election on June 12, 1993. He died in jail on July 7 last year, never tried for the crime he allegedly committed.

Participants at Friday’s procession visited the spot where Kudirat was murdered and proceeded to the Moshood Abiola Crescent, the family home, where a wreath was laid on her graveside.

“It is three years now since that dastardly act was perpetrated, yet the heart of Alhaja Kudirat is still bleeding and her ideas are still very fresh in our minds,” said a joint statement by the Constitutional Rights Project (CRP) and the Campaign for Democracy (CD).

The statement, made available to IPS on Thursday, was signed by Clement Nwankwo of the Constitutional Rights Project and Beko Ransome-Kuti of the Campaign for Democracy (CD).

Another group, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), in a statement signed by Segun Jegede, said, “the CDHR remembers the callous murder, on the 4th of June 1996, of the heroine, martyr and matriarch of the democratic struggle”.

“Time and event have not removed from the dastardliness of the act, rather they have sharpened the pain and sustained the memory,” the statement said.

It said till her death, Kudirat campaigned for the recognition of her husband’s presidential mandate. “The little gains of today, we have, could not be divorced from the sacrifices of the heroes and heroines of the June 12 struggle, one of who is Kudirat,” the statement added.

Kudirat’s killers have remained at large but rights groups believe she was killed by Nigeria’s dreaded security agents.

CDHR said the fact, “that the federal government has not done anything to apprehend the murderers even in the light of instructive confessions by a Col Yakassai and others, speaks volume of the extent to which state apparatus have been converted to the pursuit of individual goals as well as the sustainance of the mechanism of oppression.”

The statement, issued by the CDHR, called on the Lagos State Government, on whose territory the crime was committed, to bring the killers to book. The group also called for “adequate compensations” to be paid by the Nigerian government to Kudirat’s children.

“The ultimate honour that could be done to her is to bring her murderers to book and let justice take its full course. Until that is done, a thousand other honours, as welcome as they may be, will only be superficial as they will not hit where it matters most,” the statement said.

Kudirat’s murder jolted Nigerians and sparked international criticisms of the regime of Abacha, who himself died on June 8 last year, after ruling Nigeria for almost five years.

Kudirat’s daughter, Hafsat, who arrived from the United States this week, appealed to Nigerians to support President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government so that her father’s struggle and that of the other pro-democracy activists would not be in vain.

“God is watching, Abiola is watching, my mother Kudirat is also watching,” Hafsat said.

“When Abiola was alive, he was not only fighting to be president but also to create a Nigeria where every man and every citizen will live without being suppressed, harassed and intimidated,” she said.

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