Based on an approval given by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the Kudirat Abiola Memorial Cenotaph, located along Mobolaji Johnson Way, besides 7-UP Plant in Oregun, Ikeja is to undergo restoration and preservation.
To ensure work is properly done, officials of the Museum & Monuments Department of the State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture visited the Cenotaph on 1st September 2021, to assess the state of the cenotaph.
The cenotaph features a double-sided sculpted bronze in fibreglass mural, Faces of the Struggle, which depicts different faces of people in anguish and suffering, and on the flip side, people in defiant agitation.
Kudirat Abiola, a democracy activist married to the late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, was murdered on June 4, 1996.
She was assassinated while her husband was being detained by the then Nigerian military junta headed the late Sani Abacha.
Her husband was believed to have been the winning candidate in the Nigerian elections that had taken place on 12th June 1993, and he was arrested shortly after they were annulled by the government of the dictator Ibrahim Babangida.
Kudirat’s killing was the subject of an investigation and trial many years later.
According to accounts, the murder was ordered and then carried out by six men.
Abiola died in her car from machine gunfire.
Her driver also died.
Her personal assistant, who was later accused of being involved with her assassins, was in the car but was not hurt.
The Kudirat Abiola monument was erected and commissioned in the year 2000 by Lagos State Government under Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
