Below is Dr Ore Falomo,
Abiola's personal physician's exposé in an exclusive interview conducted.
This is
a must read...
Can you recall your last meeting with M.K.O Abiola. When was it, and what was the state of his health?
It was about two weeks before he died. But the visit before the last was more remarkable. It was arranged by the military government to dispel the rumour that Abiola had died in detention. They quickly arranged a meeting for me to go and see him.
They sent one captain from
Aso Rock to me to tell me that I was needed urgently in Aso Rock. This was the
penultimate meeting to the last meeting with him. I found the message strange
because my previous meetings were arranged by the commissioner of police in
Abuja, under whom Abiola was supposed to be. Whenever I visited him, I usually
returned to Lagos by 6pm, but that day, it was not possible because immediately
I got into the car, they started driving round Abuja to waste time so that it
would be dark and I won’t recognise where they were taking me to.
When we got to the place,
Abiola was there. It was a new place; I had not seen him there before. It was a
bungalow. As soon as they opened the door and Abiola saw me, he came towards me
and we hugged. We sat and unlike before, none of the guards waited to listen to
our discussion. We spoke Yoruba all the time. They objected to it at first,
later on they agreed. That day he was behaving like he was in the spirit. I
told him there was a rumour that he had been killed. He said, ‘I know that I’m
dead. They have dug the grave. They have put me in the grave except that they
have not close me up.’ I asked, ‘What happened? Have they injured you or
injected you?’ He said no, but that he just knew.
Continue after the cut............
That means he had the premonition
that he was going to die in detention.
Yes. As he was talking, his
mood changed. He told me he had forgiven those who caused his incarceration;
that it was left for them to ask for forgiveness from God. He said he forgave
them because he wants God to forgive him his sins. All these were strange,
because in my previous visits, he was always asking about the things that were
happening in the country. Then he started singing, ‘Nearer my God to thee,
nearer to thee.’ He used to sing Christian songs. After signing the song in
English, he started singing it in Yoruba. Then he got up; hugged me and we
began to cry. It was very emotional. I tried to calm him down, because I didn’t
know what he had seen. All through this period, the guards did not come to say
time was up. I told him I will tell the story to the people, which was normal
after every visit.
But did you observe any sign
or symptoms of illness in him?
No. He was neither sick nor
injured. You could say his spirit was low, but his body was good. There were no
signs and symptoms of any illness. He spoke from a very conscious mind. That
was the most poignant visit. The last visit was routine; to change his toiletries
and so on.
The then Commonwealth
Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, recently told us that when he visited
Abiola few days to his death, he was in high spirits, because he was happily
awaiting his release. How did he overcome the depression?
About two weeks to Abiola’s
death, Abdulsalami Abubakar had started to send out word that Abiola might be
released. So, the whole town started to rejoice. I don’t know how that one was
done. They even got to me and said my trips to Abuja would soon end. I knew the
government was not going to try him. Chief Rotimi Williams had already told us
that they did not have any evidence against him. There was no point going to
court. As far as I knew, Abiola knew that they would not allow him to come out
just like that since they would not take him to court. Every time, they were
asking him to denounce his mandate and prepare himself for another election,
but he refused. During my last visit, I told him I had the rumour that Abubakar
will release him but I did not want him to believe the rumour until there was
concrete evidence.
How did you receive the news
of his death?
That day, I was in the
sitting room here. A call came from the personal physician of Abubakar. He
said, ‘Doctor, get yourself ready and start coming to Abuja. The Head of State
has sent his personal jet through Governor Buba Marwa, it would be at the VIP
section of the airport.’ Of course, I was not going to enter that aircraft. But
I asked him, ‘Why are you sending for me? I was given about two weeks
appointment to come and see Abiola, so tell me what has happened that warrants
me to come urgently.’ He didn’t want to tell me that Abiola had died, so that
my reaction would not be, ‘Alright if you have killed him; eat him. I’m not the
doctor for the dead, but for the living.’ That could have been my reaction,
which was exactly my reaction when I finally learnt that he had died. After
that, I called Kola Abiola and told him that something bad had happened but
that I didn’t know the extent. The doctor also told me not to come alone; that
I should bring any of my colleagues. I then thought, maybe he had not died. I
told Kola and he said, ‘Doctor let’s go to the airport and take the plane to
Abuja.’ I didn’t know Kola had heard. We boarded Kola’s car and he tuned to BBC
news. At that time, it was about 15 minutes to 6pm. Then they announced that
Abiola had died. I asked Kola, ‘Is that true?’ He wasn’t crying, I knew he had
heard. I told him to turn back. And just before we got to Maryland, people had
started rioting. We were lucky to escape without the car being damaged.
Did you eventually go to
Abuja that day?
I refused to go. When we got
back to the house, Kola asked me: ‘What is going to happen next?’ I said,
‘Nothing; I’m not going to Abuja.’ Then he said he must go. I said ‘Yes; go so
that you take care of the body. One thing I want you to tell them is that they
must not bury him because he is a Muslim. There must be a post-mortem.’ They
were already talking to Abiola’s two wives about burying him immediately.
REVELATION!
They arranged for them [the
two wives] to come and see Abiola the day before he died. That was of course
for them to say goodbye. They did all of these without my knowledge. Up till
that time, I was the only one in five years, who was allowed to see Abiola.
Then I received another
call. This time, the governor of Lagos, Marwa, said I should come, that the
pilot and others were waiting, that he would send a car to pick me. I declined
the offer and asked them to wait. I called Prof. Oye Adeniran to represent me.
I told him to tell Abubakar’s physician that I want a post-mortem. When the
doctor heard my request, he then called me back and said he would advise
Abubakar that there must be a post-mortem. Then he said, ‘These are two deaths
too many.’ He was referring to the death of Sani Abacha and that of Abiola. You
remember in Abacha’s case, there was no post-mortem. How can a Head of State
die so suddenly and he was hurriedly buried without a post-mortem. I told him
that I would assemble a team of international pathologists to conduct the
post-mortem. So, the body was embalmed and kept in the morgue waiting for the
pathologists to arrive.
Some said Abiola was beaten
to death, others said he was poisoned. As his doctor and member of the team
that conducted the post-mortem, what were your findings?Abiola was not beaten.
He died shortly after the American delegation got to Aguda House by 3pm.
According to the written press conference given by Ambassador Thomas Pickering,
who led the American delegation, Abiola died between 3:20 and 3:40pm that day.
Nobody told Abiola that he was going to have visitors that day. So, they woke
him up and he just brushed his teeth and came out to meet with them. He had not
had his lunch. These were facts borne out of the autopsy. His intestine was
clear. They exchanged banters, he told Susan Rice, who was part of the
delegation, what she wore the first day he met her. Pickering said Abiola’s
brain must be sharp to remember all that.
According to them, their
mission was to convince Abiola to denounce his mandate and go for another
election. By then Abacha had gone, one of their problems had been solved.
Abiola was left.
They had brought that
suggestion before and Abiola rejected it. So, their mission was unnecessary
because they were not going to get him to say yes. It must have been for
another purpose. When they came in, the chief guard that usually stayed with
Abiola was not there because they didn’t tell him some people would be
visiting. Abiola came unaccompanied to that meeting. Of course, they had been
told he was a tea drinker. They brought a special flask, which Hamza
Al-Mustapha described as multi-dimensional. They poured themselves tea and
poured tea for Abiola. There was no precedence of a visitor bringing tea for
the host. It is unconventional. It is not done anywhere in the world. Not only
did they bring it, they offered someone in detention tea, with no guard around.
And Ambassador Pickering
said in his press conference that shortly after he had taken the tea, he
complained of pain in the chest and grabbed his chest. And later, he felt
uncomfortable and then, he went to the convenience to ease himself, but he did
not come back as expected. They called on him and he told them he was coming.
By then, he had started feeling weak. They asked him if they should call the
doctor but he said they should ask the guard to get his pain tablet. But he
died before the pain tablet arrived. By the time the doctor came, Abiola had
already died. They took him to Aso Rock clinic, where they tried to jerk his
heart back to life, but he was gone. That was how he died.
Are you saying that the US
had a hand in Abiola’s death?
Yes. It is necessary to note
that death followed Pickering’s missions. A notable personality usually dies
after his mission to any country. You can go and read about him. The question
was: Why did he come? We know him as Central Intelligence Agency man and he was
not the serving ambassador in the country then.
Abubakar was the one who
gave them the appointment. During a cocktail to celebrate the US National Day,
I asked the US Ambassador why they brought Pickering and others. I told him
that Abacha, who was occupying Abiola’s position had died and why did they
bring another military? We should also note that after Abiola died, Abubakar
went to White House to visit the sitting American President and he went in
military uniform. Can you recollect anybody who entered White House in military
uniform? It is not done. He was given that exception. Up till now, nobody has
repeated the precedence. What did he do? How long had he been on the throne
here that he was received by the American President? Abacha was gone, Abiola
was gone and they thought Nigeria’s problem was solved. But here we are.
The current American
President has not found it important enough to come to the same country in
which the previous governments took very big roles in taking those two actors
out. I think it high time US apologised to Nigeria for the roles it played in
the death of Abiola. The US also insisted on sending at least two pathologists
just to protect its image, because there were rumours that it was the US that
killed Abiola. Tony Blair sent a message to me through the British High
Commissioner here that he was nominating Dr. John Shepherd, one of the top
pathologists in England, and we made him the team captain. Human rights groups
from Chicago sent in a pathologist. America insisted that they wanted to be
well represented. So, they sent one Muslim doctor and one Christian doctor to
me. I was there; Abubakar’s doctor was there; Dr. Coker, the owner of that
hospital on Victoria Island was there and the team.
You believe Abiola was
poisoned, but how come this team of highly qualified doctors, including
yourself conducted the post-Morten and concluded that Abiola died from natural
causes?
No, what they said was that
there was not enough supply of blood to his heart because there was a
collection of fatty materials in the blood vessels that supply blood to the
heart. His heart did not get blood supply; that was why he died eventually. The
question is, why did that happen? How could that happen to somebody who just
woke up, had not done anything and was not doing any exercise. There are people
who have worse conditions than that and they are still alive. Something must
have engineered the heart to behave the way it did that Abiola could not
survive more than 10 minutes. We took specimen from his intestine, took his
blood and sent it to toxicologists in Canada and in London.
Another question to ask was
where did Pickering type his press statement? Abiola died around 3:40pm and by
4pm, Pickering read his typed-written press statement and said he must have
died of heart attack. The doctor that took Abiola’s body to Aso Rock clinic had
not come when Pickering addressed the press. Could something have triggered the
heart attack? The answer is yes. We also know that there are drugs that can
affect the rhythm of the heart. Such drugs can disturb the rhythm of the heart
to an extent that the heart can stop pumping blood. If you give it to anyone to
drink in tablet or liquid form, it can make the heart to stop within minutes.
Does this leave traces in the blood? Yes, because medical science has perfected
all that now. They just conducted the post-mortem of Yasser Arafat, the
Palestinian man that died about five years ago. When he died, nobody suspected,
but now they believe he was poisoned and they are trying to find out what type
of poison it was.
So, you believe medical
science can detect the poison now?
Yes, and that is why we are
calling for a more detailed investigation into the cause of Abiola’s death. Why
are the human rights activists here not pushing for further investigation into
Abiola’s death? Our government did not even want to say that the man won the
election, until President Goodluck Jonathan came.
But did Abiola have any
health condition that could have resulted to sudden death?
Tell me who had a better
health than Abiola. Before he was detained, Abiola was a globetrotter. If not
because he was very healthy, he wouldn’t have lasted five years in detention.
He was not exercising, not seeing people and so on. They even tried to injure
him once in the office of the Commissioner of Police in Abuja. A police officer
that came from Aso Rock threw Abiola against a pillar and he hit his back and
his spinal cord protruded. We gave Abiola a newspaper, and the policeman wanted
collect it from him, but he refused. Then we looked for CT scan and there was
none in Nigeria but Abacha was ready to let him go abroad for treatment. But
many people feared that if he left, they would not have allowed him back into
the country. This was because he had gone once and the then interim President
Ernest Shonekan, did not allow him back into the country. It was the same
Abacha that ensured that Abiola returned. Abacha had to change the guards at
the airport, replaced them with his own guards and asked them to fly Abiola in
from Cotonou. I was close to Abacha to know all these. Abiola landed and
trouble started. Then there was the afternoon coup, Abacha took over from
Shonekan. As far as Abacha was concerned, his reign was not to be permanent, he
had to remove Shonekan to foil Ibrahim Babangida’s plan to come back.
Babangida’s intention was to transform into a civilian president.
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