The 108-minute documentary, MKO, had its national premiere at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts in Lagos on October 1, which also served as Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary. The detail most outlets buried is the one that matters: the film exists because that history was at risk of being lost.
Director Ose Oyamendan, who said Tinubu was among those who stood with the demand for the recognition of the June 12 mandate, told attendees the documentary examines the choices political actors made during the crisis and the consequences of those choices for Nigeria. Oyamendan noted that many of those actors have never before spoken on record about the events of that period.
Oyamendan said, “This was a crucial point in Nigeria’s history where many of our leaders back then chose to side with the dictators. Tinubu risked his life, livelihood, and his family’s safety by standing with the people’s mandate. This is a story of that struggle that has brought us to where we are today.”
Tinubu attended with his wife, Oluremi Tinubu.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun, and Chief of Staff to the President Femi Gbajabiamila were among those present.
Also present were Kwara State Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, Deputy Senate President Jibrin Barau, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Benjamin Kalu, Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism, and the Creative Economy Hannatu Musawa, and former Ogun State Governor Segun Osoba.
The film examines Abiola’s rise as a businessman, publisher, and politician, his participation in the 1993 presidential election, the annulment of that election by the military government, and the pro-democracy struggle that followed. Abiola, who ran on the platform of the Social Democratic Party, won the election across a broad geographic spread, including states considered strongholds of his opponent, Bashir Tofa.
It also examines Abiola’s detention and the circumstances surrounding his death in custody on July 7, 1998, just days before he was widely expected to be released.
Archival footage and accounts feature former military Head of State Ibrahim Babangida, former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, and Abiola’s running mate Baba Gana Kingibe.
Former United States Ambassador to Nigeria Walter Carrington, former US Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, former Canadian High Commissioner Gerald Ohlsen, and members of the Abiola family also feature in the documentary.
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, paid tribute to Nigerians who lost their lives or suffered persecution, detention, exile, and other forms of repression during the struggle for the restoration of democracy and led the gathering in observing a minute’s silence in their memory.
Onanuga said, “The democracy we enjoy today was built upon the courage and sacrifices of the people we have identified. We owe them more than remembrance. We owe them a duty to ensure that no authority ever again overturns the freely expressed will of Nigerians.”
Oyamendan worked as a young journalist with Weekend Concord during the June 12 crisis and used archival material and interviews with key personalities to reconstruct Abiola’s political journey and the events surrounding the annulment. The newspaper, which was part of Abiola’s own Concord Press media group, was one of several publications shut down by the military authorities during the crackdown that followed the annulment.
Oyamendan said it was precisely the danger of losing such a national memory that strengthened his resolve to tell the story through the voices of those who participated in, witnessed, or had intimate knowledge of the events.
The 108-minute documentary had its international premiere at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2026, before its national premiere in Lagos.
Following Thursday’s national premiere, MKO is scheduled to open in cinemas across Nigeria from Friday, October 2.
For Oyamendan, that memory must not remain confined to the premiere hall or cinema circuit, as his ambition is that Nigerians everywhere, particularly generations born after the struggle, should encounter the MKO story and draw knowledge from it.
