The Man Who Thought He Would Be King

The story of Chief MKO Abiola

Born on August 24, 1937, in Abeokuta, Southwest Nigeria, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola is his father’s 23rd child.

His name, Kashimawo, means let us wait and see [if he will survive]; an allusion to his parents’ uncertainty that he would survive infancy like the 22 children before him. He did. Unfortunately, Abiola’s unique status as the long-awaited child to make it through infancy did not protect him from the calloused hands of poverty that his parents met him with. Luckily, unlike most people around him, MKO was brilliant and would do anything to stay in school.

Staying in school at Baptist Boys School for MKO meant that he had to pay for his education by singing and drumming at parties. MKO said he would occasionally wake up at 3 a.m. and walk four miles to fetch firewood, sell it, and use the money to support his family. After secondary school, he earned a scholarship to study accountancy at the University of Glasgow, married his first wife, Simbiat, and had his first two kids before returning to Nigeria. In Nigeria, he worked briefly for Guinness, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, before serving as the Chief Accountant of Pfizer.

It is essential to mention that MKO moved back to Nigeria in the mid-1960s, slightly before the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970).

MKO, ever hungry for a better life than the one he was born in, soon moved to the Nigerian division of a U.S. telecoms company, International Telegraph and Telephone (ITT). The abridged story is that Abiola rose through the ranks at ITT to become regional VP for Africa and the Middle East and CEO of ITT Nigeria.

That real story is a little bit … weird.

In1968, when Abiola joined ITT, Nigeria was trying to win — as quickly as possible — the civil war in the eastern region. The military needed communication gear to support its activities, and they went to ITT to purchase them. This transaction would eventually change MKO’s life, causing him to become friends with many young military officers, some of whom would later become Nigeria’s Heads of State.

You can watch his full story below