OPINION BY YUSUF MOHAMMED: Try to be someone’s MKO | TheCable
Over the years, many legendary tales have gained currency about late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, one of the most unique public figures in the history of Nigeria.
Let me mention one aspect of him that makes him standout. In my opinion, his quest to see majority of the black population go from illiterate to literate and from rags to riches hasn’t been matched till date by any Nigerian billionaire. As a lover of literacy, as at 1993, he had already built 41 libraries across 24 states in Nigeria.MKO was one in a million. He could be at Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth today and the next day he is relating with ordinary people on the streets of Lagos.
In his words: ‘’Africa has been the greatest victim of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and apartheid. Reparations should take the form of massive infusions of investments in infrastructures, machine-tools, power, telecommunications, education, health, advanced agricultural technology and support for political democracy in the Motherland.’’
As a result, the business mogul set up National Concord Newspapers in 1980 and by the end of 1983, it had become the most read newspaper in Nigeria. He achieved this feat because competence was his watchword. Your ethnicity didn’t matter to him. He placed huge value on merit and wanted the best brains around him. One of them was my father, Alhaji Yakubu Mohammed, who was the National Editor of the paper from 1982 to 1984.
Abiola was in awe of my father’s brilliance. The fact that he could think on his feet and write a speech or an editorial quickly was one of the attributes that further endeared my dad to him. Speaking of Abiola’s free-handedness, my dad once recalled that ‘’Abiola would tell his captain to ferry any of his editors in his private jet for an assignment outside Lagos. I am an eye witness to his humility.
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