MKO Abiola was born in Abeokuta, Ogun State to Salawu and Suliat Wuraola Abiola. His father was an agricultural trader and mainly sold cocoa, his mother traded in kola nuts. His name, Kashimawo, means “Let’s wait and see.” Moshood Abiola was his father’s twenty-third child, but the first of them to survive infancy, hence the name “Kashimawo”. It wasn’t until he was fifteen that his parents named him Moshood.
Abiola attends Abeokuta Central African School for his primary education. As a boy, he helped his father in the cocoa trade, but in late 1946 his father’s business failed due to the destruction of a shipment of cocoa, which the inspector classified as an inferior product and unsuitable for export. and should be destroyed immediately.
To support his father and brothers, he started his first business at the age of nine selling firewood that he collected in the forest at dawn before school. Abiola formed a gang at the age of fifteen and performed at various events in exchange for food. Eventually, Abiola was able to demand payment for his performances and used the money to support his family and further his secondary education at the Baptist Boys High School in Abeokuta. Abiola was editor of the school magazine The Trumpeter, Olusegun Obasanjo was its deputy editor.
In 1960 he won a government scholarship to study at the University of Glasgow, where he later gained a degree in accounting and qualified as a chartered accountant. He later became a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
In 1956, Moshood Abiola began his working life as a bank clerk at Barclays Bank in Ibadan, southwest Nigeria. After two years, he joined Western Region Finance Corporation as an accountant and then moved to Glasgow, Scotland to pursue higher education.
After returning to Nigeria, Abiola worked as a senior accountant at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
