Members of late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola’s family have disowned Professor Zainab Aduke, an alleged police-beater who claimed to be their late patriarch’s wife.
THEWILL recalls that last week, a video showing a bloodied female police detail assigned to Prof Aduke went viral on social media. In the video, the policewoman was seated on the floor after she had been given the beating of her life by Aduke and one of her domestic helps.
Both Aduke and the domestic help were subsequently arrested and remanded by the Magistrate Court sitting in Wuse Zone Six, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) for brutalising the policewoman, but she was eventually granted bail.
However, the family members of the late patriarch of Abiola family are gutted by the forced identification of the woman with the family of the late winner of June 12, 1993 presidential election. According to them, Aduke was, no doubt, married to the late businessman in 1983 and like he has always done for his other numerous wives, seeking for their betterment, he sponsored her to read English at the University of Sokoto.
Due to his closeness to then Sultan of Sokoto, Siddiq Abubakar III, Abiola allowed Aduke to stay in the palace all through her years in Sokoto and immediately after her degree in 1986, she left the place. Three years later, she shocked many when she married Diette Spiff, a former military Governor of Rivers State, in 1989. He is now a traditional ruler in Rivers State. Theirs was a well-publicised society wedding. But like one who is ingrained with fraud, she would later spring out of nowhere after Abiola’s death to claim that she reconciled with the late businessman before his death and indeed, had a child for him in 1994 and had a copy of the man’s will that was signed in 1994.
While many family members, including the children of the family, were aware of a 1991 will, Aduke took the family to court in London after Abiola’s demise and claimed that the previous will was not the authentic one and that she had a will deposed to by Abiola in 1994. The said will recognised her as a wife of the late billionaire, while the first one didn’t.
After a series of forensic analyses, which took about two years, a London court declared the will presented by Zainab as forged. She was subsequently derobed by the English court which meant she could no longer practice law in England. She also lost her job at Middlesex University in the UK where she lectured Law. She returned to Nigeria and began to allegedly hobnob with the erstwhile boss of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, who allegedly gave her a house where she presently resides. She also began to parade herself as a professor despite being disrobed by the English court.
