The ghost of Bola Ige

Bayo Olupohunda
| credits: File copy

Today, after several weeks of pondering on this topic, I have finally decided to come out with an issue that has bothered me for so long. I am talking about the mystery that had long surrounded the cold-blooded assassination of a former Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, 13 years ago. Ige was murdered in his bedroom on December 23, 2001. Though the man famously known as the “Cicero of Esa Oke” was 71 years old at the time of his death, his ghost, crying for justice, continues to haunt the land. My focus on his murder and the drama to find the perpetrators, in spite of the court’s judgment that had long acquitted the suspects is not a coincidence. Since his death, the unsolved murder has never left our collective consciousness. In his death, we see the travesty of a nation that has for long failed in its primary duty to guarantee the safety of its citizens.

This piece is borne of out of my conviction that a grievous crime like the murder of Ige and other unresolved killings, no matter how long it had taken, must never be swept under the carpet. We must continue to talk about them. We must continue to put them in the front burner of our national life. Life is sacred and in a decent society, murderers should never be allowed to walk free. This is even more so when Ige’s killers have not been found. Senseless killings like that of Ige make a mockery of us as a people. In civilised societies, lives are not taken for granted the way we do here.

This piece is at once a lamentation of the failure of our criminal justice system to find Ige’s killers and a condemnation of our lethargy as a people to demand justice in the face of so many unresolved murders. We must place value on human lives. In saner societies, criminals are found and brought to justice. Even cold cases are investigated till the puzzle is resolved.

My resolve is informed by the events in the political milieu that have thrust discussion about his death into the limelight once again. There is no doubt that Ige is unarguably one of the most recognisable figures in Nigeria’s political history in the last two decades. In writing about the assassination that happened more than a decade ago, my intention is not to reopen the wounds of a period considered one of the darkest in Nigeria’s political history. For one, the murder of the former Justice minister diminishes us all. That the killer has not been found paints a decadent picture of our judicial system. In a country where many cases of unsolved murders are gathering dust in the prosecutor’s office, Nigerians have since lost confidence in the ability of the judicial system to deliver justice to the aggrieved.

The death of Ige will always haunt us. His brutal murder will never leave our subconscious. Even now, it pricks the conscience of our leaders that such a personality could be killed without his killers being found. There have been conspiracy theories about official complicity in his death. But I am not going to dwell on those. The death also diminishes the entire leadership in our country. For those who will read this and dismiss it as a rant or say we should just move on, my response is that it won’t be that easy.  How can we attain peace, prosperity and a bright future with the baggage of grave injustices of the past? I believe our country has failed to move forward today because we as a people have failed to address the grievances harboured by the citizens. When  a country is so corrupt that the institutions of justice are manipulated to deliberately cover its dark past and move on as if nothing had happened, such a country can never progress. For example, how can the assassination of one of the most important personalities in the country’s political history since independence have gone on unresolved for several years? How do we as a people think we can wish away Ige’s death and many others like we have done in the past years? How do we think we can move on as a nation when families and citizens harbour pains of injustice against the nation and its establishment? It is still shocking that years after Ige’s death, no one has been convicted. But it is gladdening to note that in the years following his death, the callousness and failure to find the killers have made it necessary to ask the question: Who really killed Bola Ige? The question remains a mystery that has defied all answers.

If a personality like Ige could have been dispatched without any fuss, then Nigerians must realise how vulnerable they are. Until the time of his death, Ige was not your ordinary politician. Apart from being the Minister of Justice in the former President Olusegun Obasanjo government, he was the late Obafemi Awolowo’s protégé and an important political figure in the South-West in particular. But now it seems his ghost has refused to rest in peace. His ghost continues to demand justice. Apart from the murder of the late Dele Giwa through a letter bomb, no death has grabbed the headlines than the death of Ige. In recent times, his name has reverberated in the National Assembly where a ministerial nominee who had been alleged to be complicit in his death was once again quizzed for his alleged role in his murder.

In Osun State, Ige’s death has become the subject of controversy in recent times. The ruling APC and the political camp of the PDP’s governorship candidate, Iyiola Omisore, have continued to trade accusations over who is responsible for the death of Ige. Omisore who had, himself, been a suspect but had been acquitted by the courts, now has the searchlight being beamed on him having emerged as the PDP governorship candidate. That is the cross he has to bear. There is no doubt that the assassination of Ige is being politicised by both camps. It seems both parties’ stand to win or lose so long as Ige’s death is used to whip up emotions. There is even a call that the case be reopened. I do not know if this is a good thing, but I welcome all genuine attempts to find Ige’s killers and several other unresolved murders in the country.

While we expect politicians to make political capital out of anything to gain or retain power, senseless deaths such as that of Ige must be treated as a national tragedy. We must encourage genuine efforts to resolve these killings. Our failure as a country to address past injustices against the citizens is the reason why there is so much impunity in the land. When the government fails to protect the lives of its citizens, that government loses its legitimacy. The killers of Ige and many others must be found.