Abiola’s family slams journalist David Hundeyin over ‘fake news’ report linking MKO to drugs

The family of the late politician Bashorun Moshood Abiola has accused journalist David Hundeyin of spreading fake news about their patriarch.

Abiola, a millionaire businessman and politician was the presumed winner of the landmark June 12, 1993 presidential election, which was later infamously annulled by military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida.

Abiola died in military detention in 1998, amid lingering suspicion of foul play, under the watch of General Abdulsalami Abubakar.

In a recently-published article titled ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord To Presidential Candidate’, Mr Hundeyin claimed that Abiola was involved in narcotics.

However, Yushau Abiola, in a statement on Tuesday on behalf of all Kudirat Abiola’s children, challenged the journalist to provide evidence for the allegations.

According to them, neither their father nor his companies’ bank accounts were ever frozen as claimed by Hundeyin, adding that Abiola was so respected and dignified that he was the only Nigerian to have been so far allowed to enter the United States without his international passport.

“The completely unfounded narcotics related allegations by David Hundeyin in relation to our father in his article ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential candidate’ not only raise questions about Hundeyin’s motive for including these concocted facts but also expose Hundeyin as a hack journalist,” the statement said.

The family wondered why Hundeyin echoed an unfounded allegation that first appeared in 2015 in Daily Beast, an American tabloid, where John Campbell who had “concocted it could not concretely justify the rumour when he was confronted by the Abiola family.”

“We hereby state for the record that our father was never accused of nor indicted for nor involved in any narcotics related matter and we challenge David Hundeyin, the investigative journalist, to provide the results of his so called research showing such allegations other than the 2015 Daily Beast article,” the family added.