… IBB confirmed ABIOLA would be a great President if election hadn’t been voided
*Received threats to life, paid attention to the warning, but refused to be cowed
*Met Nigeria’s former Heads-of-State: Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdusalami Abubakar on long silence behind the life, times, mystery and myth of Abiola until a chance encounter in a brief interview
*Worked earlier as a journalist for newspapers and television stations in four continents: including the BBC, Associated Press, Weekend Concord and Frankfurter Allgemeine
*Refuses to chase after Oscars and Emmys in the United States, not freaked by awards
*Reveals next project: ‘a fiction about a pilot shot down by terrorists in Nigeria who escaped in under 24 hours’
*BY PHILIP FAVOUR BOLUWATIFE/SOUTHWEST CORRESPONDENT, Naija Standard Newspaper Inc USA
HE was in Washington, DC in the summer of 1998 when the news reached him that Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola had died. Years later, and after a journey of more than a decade to put it on screen, Ose Oyamendan, a Nigerian-American filmmaker and journalist, turned that moment, an acronym of Abiola’s names and the long shadow it cast over Nigeria, into MKO; a feature documentary on the life, times, challenges and political struggles of the man who won Nigeria’s June 12, 1993, presidential election, which was annulled by the military government of the day under General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, IBB.
The film had its world premiere at Sheffield DocFest in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2026, Nigeria’s Democracy Day. It reached home soil od Africa’s most populous black nation on earth on October 1st, 2026, with a national premiere in Lagos State hosted by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, followed by a nationwide cinema release on October 2nd. The powerful, inspirational film running 108 minutes, gathers first-hand accounts from figures at the centre of the era, among them former military President IBB, ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar, and with inclusion from a three-time Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Mark Jonathan Harris on its producing team.
For the cerebral, highly intelligent Oyamendan, the story is deeply personal: His father worked at Concord Newspaper, one of the mainstream media institutions founded by Abiola, and Oyamendan himself worked for Weekend Concord in Nigeria. His work schedule which routes him between Los Angeles, Lagos and London, ensured he made his debut feature with the critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary film maker, Aswat Acherim, who explores unlikely war zone friendships between residents of Sderot, an Israeli village, and their neighbors in Gaza. This graduate of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, USC, earned an MFA in film production, he has written, directed and produced a few dozen commercials; web series, narrative and documentary films across the USA, Africa, Europe; Asia and the Middle East, and still reigns as an award winner at Tribeca, Rome and Houston WorldFest film festivals.
Before USC, he worked as a Program Associate with Amnesty International, collaborating extensively with the Administration, U.S. Congress and the State Department, an experience that inspired his one-hour drama, 200 South Capitol, which was optioned by Fox Broadcasting Corporation. Before film, politics and advocacy, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Lagos and worked as a journalist for newspapers and television stations in four continents: including the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, the Associated Press and Frankfurter Allgemeine. His projects have been played in theaters, on television and on streaming platforms around the world.
In this exclusive interview with Naija Standard Newspaper Inc USA, held shortly after the film’s Nigeria release, Oyamendan explains why he felt compelled to fill a gap in the nation’s memory, why the film carries the title MKO, how his team coaxed reluctant powerbrokers to speak; what the production cost him, and why it is never his character to chase after awards:
*PICTURE: MKO DOCUMENTARY ALREADY IN CINEMAS & MOVIE THEATRE:
*NAIJA STANDARD: It’s good to connect back with you for this interview.
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Thank you so much. It’s good to be connected again, George.
*NAIJA STANDARD: The MKO documentary happens to be one of the biggest documentaries in Africa, a political documentary. What inspired you to go into this documentary?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, that issue, that event, is a part of my life. It’s a part of our lives as a people. And there was just this big gap in Nigerian history. All these young people don’t know what happened. Previously, it seems there was an effort to push it away, so nobody remembers. My whole thing has always been, if you don’t know where you’re coming from, you’re not going to get to where you’re going. So, we have to fill that gap. That was one of the inspiring things, because that whole event changed the course of the lives of millions of people, including me.
*PICTURE: OSE OYAMENDAN CONQUERS THE WORLD OF FILM DOCUMENTARY:
*NAIJA STANDARD: So why did you title the documentary MKO? You could have used something like Democracy, or whatever, but why did you use the name of the man, the martyr who laid down his life? It’s the beginning of his name, a short form of his name. Everybody is aware MKO is known as Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. So why did you use MKO as the title of the documentary? What led to that?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, we started with different titles: ‘Hope Derailed’, ‘Waiting for Mr. President’. Then, because it’s an international documentary, after we went to all these international pitch contests, and everybody was always asking, “What is this about? The moment we say ‘MKO’, the guy who was the principal figure in all of this. As such, it’s more in terms of identification, selling and marketing. If you look at a lot of iconic documentaries, or even films, if it’s about somebody or it involves somebody, you use that name because it’s easy for people to grasp.
*NAIJA STANDARD: Right. So, while putting this documentary together, what were the challenges you faced as the producer, and how were you able to overcome them?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, our biggest challenge to start with was getting all these people in high places to talk, because a lot of people just want it buried, but we were persistent. Some of the people who didn’t want to talk, who didn’t feel obliged to talk, we eventually got to put their voice in the documentary. We were able to overcome those things basically because of my relationship with the story and with some of these people, and just finding a way to get it done, really. After we finished talking to some of them, I would say, I can’t believe we actually got to talk to this person.
Later, our biggest problem became financing. You would think that for a film of this nature, a lot of people who call themselves pro-democrats in Nigeria, or who benefited from my brother dying so they could become leaders, would contribute, but nobody really did. So, we had financing issues, and we kept battling it. We kept battling it, I was resilient in the entire process, but it was important for me for the film to come out. They say the people who win a race are the people who finish.
*NAIJA STANDARD: How much money, out of pocket, were you able to put into this documentary on your own because it wasn’t easy?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, we have a production company, which I run, and I think on our own we probably put in, I’m not too certain, a little bit north of $350,000 cash as a production company. That is not the budget. It’s just what we put in.
*PICTURE: OSE OYAMENDAN WITH PRESIDENT TINUBU IN ASO ROCK:
*NAIJA STANDARD: Some of the former heads of state in Nigeria, you surely would have spoken to a couple of them. Were some of them hesitant to speak on the record? Did some not want to speak with you? And who among the heads of state was freely open to speak with you on the MKO documentary?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, I think Babangida was open to speaking, because Babangida knows how to control the narrative himself. So, he was free to speak. Obasanjo spoke. There wasn’t too much hesitation once we were able to get through to him. Abdulsalami was one of the last people we spoke to, because for like five or six years he didn’t want to say anything. But I was very lucky. I was shooting something else that involved him, and I used that opportunity to talk to him, and I was able to talk briefly.
*NAIJA STANDARD: When you spoke with IBB, was there any point during the interview for the documentary he showed any regret for annulling the June 12, 1993, presidential election?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: I think Babangida doesn’t talk in terms of regrets. He never said, “I regretted this, I regretted that”. But you can see in him, again, don’t let me say that, because I always believe Babangida is a master communicator, and sometimes he puts mirrors in front of you and lets you see what you want to see. So, I don’t think he expressed regret. He said something like, he knew Abiola would be a great president.
*PICTURE: PRESIDENT BOLA TINUBU & WIFE, FIRST LADY, OLUREMI TINUBU:
*NAIJA STANDARD: Then why did he not allow him to get through to become president?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, I’m not going to speak for him. But I think in those days, these people were military officers who felt like they controlled our lives, that they could do whatever they wanted. And sometimes when you start jumping from one tree to the other, you don’t know when you’ve left the branch, and you’re going to fall flat. I think that’s what happened to him. He didn’t know when to say, okay, it’s time to go home, until they pushed him away.
*NAIJA STANDARD: While you were putting this documentary together, was there any time that your life, before, during or after the documentary, was under threat?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: You know, me, I started life as a journalist. Before that, we were doing small, small student unionism on campus at UNILAG. So, I’m not the kind of person who pays attention to that. There were talks about it. They were like, oh, we have to give you security to go to these places and stuff, which, you know, you don’t dismiss out of hand. But sometimes those things are also ways to prevent you from doing what you want to do. So, we paid attention to them, but we didn’t let it stop us.
*NAIJA STANDARD: Are there plans in place to subtitle and translate this documentary into French and Spanish, for the Latino and the Francophone communities, for a larger audience?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Well, that’s a distributor kind of question, really. If there’s a demand for it, they will do those things easily, and we’re hopeful we get picked up by a streamer, and then they will do those things automatically. We’re still in the early stages, because we just had our premiere last week. It came out in theaters in Nigeria this week. We think it’s going to come out in theaters in the UK in a few weeks, and in the US a couple of months from now. So, we’re just dipping our toes in the water. But if there’s demand for it, I’m sure we’ll do it.
*NAIJA STANDARD: Do you plan on entering the MKO documentary for the Emmy Award documentary category, or for the Oscar documentary category in the US?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Me, I don’t do awards. Those are for the big producers attached to a film. I don’t do awards because when you make a story like this, and people are able to see it and it matters to them, it affects their lives, that’s a big award for me. You also need to realize that the places we come from, and the stories we tell, don’t register too much on these awards people’s radar. So, I don’t want to chase things that people will be disappointed about at the end of the day. If they like it and give it to us, we’ll take it. But we’re not running after it.
*NAIJA STANDARD: One or two more questions, and then we will round up, for your health reasons. What has been the high point of your career? Can you mention some of the high points of your journalism and your movie career?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: I’m trying to think. Journalism is easy, because in journalism I won the highest award for a journalist in Nigeria as a 21, 22-year-old. You don’t go higher than that. In film, just being able to make these films is a high, because making films is really difficult. I made an impossible film in the Middle East, Aswat Acherim. People still ask me how I got that done, with access in Gaza and in Israel. Even this one, MKO, getting to talk to all these people, getting to finally finish it, despite the obstacles we faced. You just have to be very thankful to God, because for me, everything we’ve accomplished are the high points, if that makes sense.
*NAIJA STANDARD: Are there other projects you are working on right now, or intend to work on, between now and the next couple of years?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: No, we’re always working on projects. We have a project we’re trying to work on now about a pilot who was shot down by terrorists in Nigeria. It’s a narrative, it’s a fiction film- shot down by terrorists, and how he managed to escape under 24 hours. That’s a big thing we’re actively developing right now. We have other small, small things in documentaries. In this work, it takes years for things to get done, so you have to keep developing and putting it together.
*NAIJA STANDARD: Well, Ose, it’s nice speaking with you, so we can allow you to go and have some rest. We hope to speak with you very soon, when we go live with the publication, okay?
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Thank you so much. I’m sorry for my voice, I’m just a bit under the weather, but I couldn’t say no to this.
*NAIJA STANDARD: It’s understandable. Thank you so much, Ose.
*OSE OYAMENDAN: Thank you, man.
*NAIJA STANDARD: All right, good night.
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