Hajiya Maryam Jidah Abacha (born 1945 in Kano) was the wife of General Sani Abacha, Head of State from 17 November 1993 until his death in office on 8 June 1998. A Kanuri woman of the Borno aristocracy on her mother's side and Lebanese-Hausa on her father's, she married Abacha in Kano in 1965; the marriage produced ten children, including Ibrahim Abacha (killed in a 1996 Falcon-900 air crash near Kano), Mohammed Abacha (twice indicted on $1bn money-laundering charges, settlement with the FGN 2014 and 2019) and Sadiq Abacha (head of the Abacha business holdings).
She inherited Maryam Babangida's Office of the First Lady infrastructure and launched the Family Support Programme (FSP) on 19 January 1994, and the Family Economic Advancement Programme (FEAP) in 1997 — both modelled on Better Life with the addition of FSP-branded soft loans through the National Commercial Bank. The FSP built the Maryam Abacha Women & Children Hospital at Maitama, Abuja, and ran a network of FSP centres in every state. Critics — including the All-Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools — alleged that FSP and FEAP funds were used as conduits for political and personal procurement; the Vatsa-Commission-style audit promised in 1999 was never published.
Her tenure as First Lady spanned the June 12 detention of MKO Abiola (June 1994 – July 1998), the Ogoni Nine executions (10 November 1995), the assassination of Kudirat Abiola (4 June 1996), and the Pa Alfred Rewane killing (October 1995). After her husband's death in disputed circumstances at Aso Rock on 8 June 1998, she was prevented from leaving the country in the immediate aftermath; eighteen unaccompanied suitcases of foreign currency seized at Kano airport on 12 June 1998 were the first traces of the Abacha loot that the Federal Government has spent the subsequent twenty-five years recovering through eight international jurisdictions.
She has lived since 1999 between Kano and Maitama, Abuja, occupying a position of effective immunity through the negotiated settlements between her family and the Federal Government (2002 Obasanjo–Abacha family agreement; 2014 OECD-supervised settlement of $480m through Liechtenstein; 2019 settlement of $311m through Jersey). She gave a single substantive interview (TVC, 2018) defending her husband's record. She is the only First Lady of the Republic whose post-tenure has been defined entirely by litigation over the wealth accumulated during the office.