The colourfully-dressed crowd rushed into the Abiola compound in the plush Ike Ja district after police withdrew at the request of the family shortly before the burial took place. They set up loud speakers, blaring out the music of the late Nigerian musician Fela Ransome-Kuti, and for a brief while drowning out Islamic music that had been playing earlier.

``This man contributed so much to our nation. That is why I have come. Our icon is dead,'' said Ketch Ononuja, a student.

Abiola, whose body had been taken to his home at dawn on Saturday after an autopsy by an international team of pathologists, was buried, wrapped in a simple white shroud and lowered into the freshly dug grave underneath a coconut tree and next to his first wife Simbiat who died in 1992 of cancer.

Police and thefamily had both feared disruption of the funeral and briefly it looked as if they were right after some 200 students broke police lines to enter the compound and demanded to be allowed to attend.

Abiola was too important a figure for a private burial, said a student leader, who was not identified. Taking a microphone he told the crowd that Abiola ``does not belong only to the family. He also belongs to the people, and to the students.'' The family agreed and asked the police to leave from positions around the house, upon which hundreds of people entered the grounds.

A former businessman, Abiola was an unlikely Opposition figure until his 1994 arrest. He was detained after pronouncing himself President on the basis of the 1993 elections whose results were not published by the then junta.

`Death natural'

Nigerian Opposition leader Moshood Abiola died of ``natural causes'', an international panel of pathologists concluded on Saturday. ``In our opinion, the mechanism of death is due to a rapiddeterioration in a diseased heart. At this time, our preliminary opinion is that death was due to natural causes as a result of long-standing heart disease,'' the British, Canadian and US pathologists said in a statement.