Was he involved in the killing of Chief Abiola?

On 12 June 1993, Nigeria held presidential elections in which Chief Bashorun Moshood Kashimawo Abiola emerged as the victor with 58 per cent of the national vote. However, President Babangida opted to annul the results, setting off a storm that ultimately led to his resignation and General Sani Abacha’s eventual government takeover. On 11 June, Abiola declared himself president, which resulted in his arrest and four years of imprisonment under Abacha. In the interim, Abacha died on 8 June 1998, ‘while in the arms of a pair of Indian prostitutes’, or as Pickering put it, after ‘visiting with’ two ladies of the night in the presidential residence. His successor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, chose to release numerous political prisoners, including General Obasanjo. Discussions also took place regarding the political logistics of freeing Abiola.

It was in this context that, on 7 July 1998, Susan Rice, President Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, along with Pickering and other US diplomats, visited Nigeria, accompanied by Bil Twaddell, the US Ambassador to Nigeria, to discuss the country’s planned transition to democratic rule and to lobby for Abiola’s release. The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, had also been there to see Abiola a week earlier.

The team first met General Abubakar in the morning and then moved on to meet with Abiola in the afternoon at the government guesthouse on the presidential compound in Abuja. Unbeknownst to them, one of the most surreal encounters in US diplomatic history was about to unfold. Nothing could have prepared them for this.

As Pickering told the BBC and the Oral History Project, Abiola, whom he had met before, entered the room, recognized him, and exchanged a few words before they all sat down. Tea was brought in, and they were all served from the same pot. Only Pickering declined to have tea. Abiola then ‘suddenly became quite incoherent and distracted and didn’t seem to understand what we were saying’.

After a few seconds, he went to the toilet and put off his shirt. He went and sat on a different couch, then ‘slumped down and slid on the floor.’ At this point, the American diplomats keenly watching him realized something was wrong and ran over to him. Susan Rice called for a doctor as Pickering was checking his pulse as they tried to revive him and keep him awake.

However, Abiola was not coherent and barely awake. The doctor came in, checked him and immediately transferred him to the presidential clinic on the same compound. The Americans followed him there because, as Pickering said, ‘I knew right away that if this man died in our presence or was going to die in our presence, we had to know absolutely the whole story. After waiting for an hour or so, the doctor came out and told them, “He was probably near dead when we got here. I can’t revive him, and there is nothing more we can do.”

They then saw the president to tell him what had happened and prepare a press statement. Rice then met with Abiola’s wife and daughter, who had been summoned to the residence and who ‘immediately connected us with his death and were suspicious of our role.’ To allay these suspicions, the US government brought three internationally recognized and reputable forensic experts to conduct a postmortem. They   concluded that there was no evidence of any poisoning and that Abiola had a ‘vastly enlarged heart’ with ‘every symptom of massive heart failure.’

The postmortem results don’t seem to have allayed the suspicions and conspiracy theories regarding US involvement. However, one must ask why Americans would want to kill a former president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, patron of the WEB Du Bois Foundation, trustee of the Martin Luther King Foundation, and director of the International Press Institute. A man who made most of his money while living in the US and leading the ITT Corporation’s subsidiary in Nigeria as board chairman? What other profile could be more pro-American? And even if they wished to kill him, why would they choose the most blatant method meant to inform the whole world that they are the ones who did it?

In his memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, one of the most prominent democracy activists and a close friend and tribesman of Abiola, made it clear that the killing of Abiola had been planned and executed by the Nigerian Army. Days before Abiola died, Soyinka received a message from his son, delivered by ‘a source we had learned not to take lightly’, stating that a ‘notorious gang in the Nigerian Army has completed their plan to assassinate Chief Moshood Abiola as a “final settlement of the Abacha /Abiola war’ and that ‘Chief Abiola’s death could come within a few days’. Soyinka believed this and wrote that he would have done everything in his power to have Abiola freed had he received the message in time.

Thomas R. Pickering is widely considered as ‘the most accomplished diplomat of his generation’” He earned a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine in 1953; a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and a second master’s degree from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He was also the recipient of 12 honorary degrees.

Pickering was an ambassador to Russia, India, the United Nations, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan. Additionally, he served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. He held the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service.

Time magazine declared him the “five-star general of the diplomatic corps” when he was appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The New York Times declared that he was “arguably the best-ever U.S. representative to that body’ when he served as ambassador to the United Nations. While King Hussein declared him “the best American ambassador I’ve dealt with’ In 2002, he was presented the Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy Award by the American Foreign Service Association.