Following in her mother's footsteps.

• Author: Bernstein, Dennis
• Position: Hafsat Abiola, daughter of assassinated Nigerian activist Kudriat Abiola

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Hafsat Abiola, the daughter of Nigerian pro-democracy activist Kudriat Abiola, got worried in May when the ruling military junta charged her mother with publishing seditious material. But she had no idea her mother would be assassinated. Kudriat Abiola paid the ultimate price for her opposition to the Nigerian junta. On June 4, her car was attacked by gunmen seconds after she passed a police checkpoint, and she was shot multiple times at close range. She died a few hours later. "I understand what kind of ideas influenced my mother's choices," Hafsat Abiola says philosophically. "Activists pay a cost."

In a recent interview, Hafsat Abiola, a senior at Harvard, said that she has every intention of picking up the struggle for democracy in Nigeria where her mother left off. "I think it is very important that we continue my mother's work," Abiola says. "She died because she refused to stand for injustice in Nigeria. Because of that, her spirit will live on."

Abiola's father is the jailed opposition leader Moshood Abiola, who was elected to the presidency in 1994. Arrested by the junta on treason charges after attempting to take office, he has been in solitary confinement for two years. The young Abiola says she fears for his psychological and physical health. She is convinced the Nigerian junta assassinated her mother as a way of thwarting the resistance movement her father leads. "From all indications, this attack was to...