MKO HAS BECOME IMMORTAL – FASHOLA

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), his predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other prominent politicians as well as members of the civil society at the weekend paid glowing tributes to the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election, Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola .

Governor Fashola said the late politician has become immortal.

He told the capacity crowd of party leaders, civil society groups, prominent members of Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms CODER) as well as student leaders at the Oramiyan Hall of the Lagos Airport Hotel, Ikeja, venue of the event that 'by fulfilling his mortal covenant with the Creator, MKO has traded life for immortality'.

The governor said the most defining legacy of the late business mogul has nothing to do with how rich he was but has everything to do with his morality and courage to sacrifice everything for June 12, adding, 'In doing so, he acquired a rare moral authority even in death that has bequeathed a vast store of goodwill to his family, dependents and all those associated with him while he lived'.

Noting that many now often remember Chief Abiola for events that happened during the last five years of his life, he declared, 'His philanthropy and the many lives  he changed with his generousity; his entrepreneurship as alter ego of Concord Airlines, Concord Newspaper, ITT and others, have almost become mere footnotes. Nobody talks of them on June 12'.

According to him, 'June 12, as a day of reckoning, emerged from a national flaw that manifested itself by way of electoral disappointment. We got so close on June 12, 1993 and literally threw it away and the echoes of that disappointment still reverberate today in the name of Electoral Reforms'.

Earlier, in his lecture titled '2011 Elections; June 12 Perspectives', the Guest Lecturer, Comrade Ayo Opadokun, said the categorical imperatives for  free and fair elections in Nigeria include that Nigerians must never accept any arrangements other than a digitalized freshly produced voters' register and that no sitting chief executive should appoint an electoral commissioner as recommended by the Justice Uwais Commission.