It is a shame that we have not seen any reciprocal tenacity in the quest to bring Ige’s killers to justice. His family deserves closure to this case. Where’s Obasanjo and who killed Bola Ige?

For the journalist, these are interesting times. The biggest party in the country, the People’s Democratic Party, is cooking up a concoction in its political pot. Ibrahim Babangida, the man who stepped aside from power some 17 years ago after the June 12, 1993 election debacle, is back in the 2011 presidential race and as you read this, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, the incumbent, would have officially launched his campaign for the PDP ticket too. I also expect the National Security Adviser, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, to have resigned his appointment and from this week, mobilise his own political troops for the battle to pick the PDP presidential ticket. Not to be left out is former vice-president Atiku Abubakar, who has finally got the waiver to contest for the presidency from the PDP. And of course Governor Bukola Saraki, who has cleverly used his chairmanship of the Governors’ Forum to prepare his presidential bid.

As for the other political parties, it is only Muhammadu Buhari, former military leader, who has been criss-crossing Nigeria looking for support for his presidential bid on the platform of the Conference for Progressive Change, CPC. We wait for the others.

It is true that the race for 2011 was the biggest news last week, but one thing brought home the incredulity and shamelessness of the Nigerian situation for me. It was the posthumous celebration of the 80th birthday of Uncle Bola Ige, Nigeria’s former attorney- general who was cruelly and brutally murdered in December 2001. His widow, Justice Atinuke Ige, was to die shortly thereafter a broken woman confronted with the futility and insincerity of the efforts of the Obasanjo government to find her husband’s killers.

Last week’s birthday remembrance for Uncle Bola was also to remind us about the failure of the country he served as attorney-general to do justice by him. No one is even sure if the police is still looking for his killers or if the president he served is worried about the lack of progress in bringing them to justice. This is particularly so because of the doublespeak from the authorities over the issue. In late May 2006 when Newswatch asked the then inspector general of police, Sunday Ehindero, what the state of the Bola Ige investigation was, his reply was as instructive as it was bewildering.

Ehindero said: “Let me change the perception which is wrong. I was confronted with the same question when I went to the National Assembly, that why is it that those who murdered Bola Ige have not been found? And I told them that I can’t understand the question because we arrested some suspects, arranged a case file and sent it to the attorney- general of Oyo State. If they were not satisfied with the police investigation they would have told us to go and re-do the investigation. But they were satisfied and took the suspects to court. One of the suspects is now a senator. They were taken to court and the process of prosecution was continued. I mean, how can anyone say we have not found the killers of Bola Ige? From what investigation showed, we took the killers of Ige to court.”

Of course, we have been told since then that the case file is still “open”. And this is what makes the comments of former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission boss Nuhu Ribadu at Ige’s birthday remembrance last week important. According to him, “The murder of Chief Ige, a serving chief law officer of the nation, remains a national embarrassment and scandal. As a policeman, I feel ashamed because it is our responsibility to protect lives; it is the task we have undertaken to do and if some people will outwit us to commit crime, it is our responsibility to bring them to justice; we have failed in this regard. No one is in prison because of Ige’s death; even failed states bring people to justice.”

I don’t believe the authorities feel any shame that nothing has been done about the murder of Ige and former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his government have much to account for over the death. Here’s why.

As an editor at  the Sunday Concord in 1983, I remember Uncle Bola Ige coming to the Concord Forum where senior editors grilled invited guests. One thing that came for discussion during the interview was the trial of then Governor Ige over the political crisis in Oyo, particularly between him and his deputy, the late S.M. Afolabi. The Unity Party of Nigeria under the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, tried Ige and Afolabi at its Yola congress for looking for a solution to the crisis from the enemy, General Obasanjo, a friend to both men, but a man hated by the UPN leadership for his” lack of regard and respect for Awolowo.” Ige nearly had his shot at a second term in Oyo State wrestled from him. He survived but he told the Concord Forum: “I am not going to lose my friends because of political differences.”

A similar situation was to confront Ige in 1999 in the United States of America. At the Egbe Omo Yoruba conference held in Atlanta, Georgia, in late spring, there was an attempt by the leadership of the Diaspora Yoruba dissuade him from joining Obasanjo’s government. Ige was on the high table with the Alliance for Democracy presidential candidate and rival Olu Falae but he was determined not to budge. In his more than one hour keynote address (which he gave completely in Yoruba),  Ige said he would join the government but pleaded with such leaders as General Alani Akinrinade and other pro-democrats to continue the fight outside the corridors of power. His    support for Obasanjo would not be shaken.

It is a shame that we have not seen any reciprocal tenacity in the quest to bring Ige’s killers to justice. His family deserves closure to this case. Where’s Obasanjo and who killed Bola Ige?

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