Hafsat Abiola

EARLY LIFE

Hafsat Olaronke Abiola-Costello is the eighth child of Nigeria's uninaugurated president-elect, the late Chief Moshood Abiola and late Kudirat Abiola. She studied at Queens College, Yaba, Lagos, and then Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, where she graduated in 1992. She then studied Development Economics, receiving a degree from Harvard College in 1996, and later earned her M.Sc. in International Development from Tsinghua University, Beijing.

CAREER

In honour of her mother's death, she founded the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) in 1997. She is President of Women in Africa Initiative (WIA) and also one of the founders of Connected Women Leaders (CWL). In 2009, Abiola-Costello founded China-Africa Bridge and China Africa Forum. She organized performances of The Vagina Monologues in Nigeria to raise funds. Since May 2008, she has been a Councillor at the World Future Council. Abiola-Costello is an advisory council member at the Fetzer Institute, as well as the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. In July 2011, she was appointed the Special Adviser to the Governor of Ogun State with responsibility for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. In 2016, she was re-appointed Special Adviser to Governor Ibikunle Amosun in Ogun State. In 2022, she announced her support for Governor Yahaya Bello's presidential campaign. Hafsat Abiola has appeared in multiple films, most notably as the central subject of the critically acclaimed 2014 documentary The Supreme Price. She also appeared in Problema (2010), and Mko (2016).