66 out of 120 children who came forward claiming to be Abiola after the politician’s death on July 7, 1998, failed the DNA tests that were conducted on them, according to Olalekan Abiola, one of the sons of the well-known 1993 presidential winner, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola (MKO Abiola).
During an interview with Vanguard, Olalekan said that his father was so giving that he helped many women, including those who were single, by paying their rent, giving them food, or even giving them a place to live.
He said that in an attempt to inherit some of his father’s wealth, some of these women had surreptitiously changed their children’s surnames from other men to Abiola after his father passed away. Olalekan stated that his father had stipulated in his will that all children who came forward to claim their ancestry would have to undergo DNA testing.
‘’I think the most important thing I learnt from him is to hold on to our religion, Islam. I say this because this was what my father did that made people love him. All he did were based on Islam, which teaches us as Muslims to be charitable. My father never drank alcohol. He never went partying. He was not a party freak neither was he a gambler. The only thing you could say about my father that was kind of negative was that he had a lot of women but a lot of these women were those that came to him to give themselves to him willingly. Some of them came with children and said their husbands had abandoned them.
They usually begged him for shelter, school fees and even with food. They used to come and line up in front of this house every month to collect their allowances. My father would get some of them apartments or a house. Then they began to call themselves Mrs. Abiola, even though many of them were not. They would change their children’s names to Abiola and that was why my father wrote in his will that DNA test had to be done for all those who claimed to be his children.
About 120 children came forward to say they were MKO’s children but only 54 of them passed the DNA test at the end of the day (meaning 66 failed). So it was these women who were the ones coming to him and not him going around looking for them. When my father was alive back then, we saw women outside the house everyday.
About 10 to 15 different women, with different shapes and complexion, would come to see him for one thing or the other everyday. I think the main lesson I learnt from my dad was holding fast to religion.”
