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A Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, recently reopened one of the putrid open sores that besmirch Nigeria when he urged the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to restart investigations into the murder of 20 years ago of Bola Ige, then the Attorney-General of the Federation. By recalling Buhari’s “robust pledge” to open an enquiry into a series of unsolved political murders across the country, Soyinka also reminds Nigerians and the world of the failure of the state to protect its citizens and to effectively investigate, apprehend and bring the murderers to justice.
For the sake of justice, preservation of the state and of the families of the deceased, Buhari should heed this call and order diligent investigations into all past high-profile murders.
Lasting pain has been the lot of the Ige family since December2001, when ‘unknown gunmen’ infiltrated the Ibadan, Oyo State, home of the 71-year-old AGF and shot him to death in his own bedroom. They are not alone.The Fourth Republic has witnessed many brutal assassinations of high-profilepolitical figures. Mosthave gone unsolved.Since 1998, there have been over 50 such unresolved murders, according to a report. Sadly, the Nigeria Police has failed miserably to rise to the challenge.
Ige’s murder particularly outraged the country and sullied its image on the world stage. He was not only the incumbent AGF and Minister of Justice; he was an ex-governor of old Oyo State, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, a former state commissioner and political giant for four decades. Soyinka’s reminder to Buhari to bring the killers and those of other assassination victims to book is timely.
In a message to the 20th anniversary symposium organised by the Bola Ige for Justice Centre in Lagos, Soyinka pointedly asked of the President’s pledge: “Does it all amount to yet another instance of political bravado?A nation’s honour is in question and remains so until the hour of closure. Thus, she must never relent in demanding an explanation for his brutal murder, expose the perpetrators, identify the conspirators, and reinstate the broken lines of justice.” This is the right way to go.
Similarly, an elder statesman, Alfred Rewane, was killed in October 1995 at his Ikeja residence, Lagos, during the bloody era of military dictator,the late Sani Abacha. The Peoples Democratic Party National Vice-Chairman, Aminasoari Dikibo, was murdered in 2004. The real killers have never been apprehended. The National Vice-Chairman of the defunct All Nigeria Peoples Party, who was Buhari’s presidential campaign coordinator in 2003, Marshall Harry, was murdered in his Abuja residence ahead of the 2003 election. His killers are also not known.
Also unresolved is the June 4, 1996 assassination of Kudirat Abiola; the September 2002 double murder of the Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, Onitsha Branch, Barnabas Igwe, and his wife, Abigail, and the July 2006 killing of Funsho Williams, a PDP governorship aspirant in Lagos State. Although the police arraigned some suspects before the court, a Lagos High Court judge freed them, citing lack of evidence.
Journalists have also been felled. Most bizarre was the 1986 killing by parcel bomb of Dele Giwa, the editor-in-chief of Newswatch. Bagauda Kaltho of Tell/Tempo disappeared in 1996.In a 2019 report,the Committee to Protect Journalists listed Nigeria among the 13 worst countries where killings of journalists have remained unsolved.
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Common to these atrocities that attracted national and global attention are: the pall of suspicion on the incumbent governments; failure to investigate the deaths to the logical conclusion; botched enquiries; and discernible lack of interest by the authorities to uncover, arrest and prosecute the killers and their sponsors. In some cases, the suspects arrested turned out to have been innocent.In others, like in the Ige and Kudirat trials, key suspects later recanted their initial confessions. Some suspects put on trial over the Rewane murder reportedly died mysteriously in detention.
The result is that assassins and those who contracted them have been walking free. Investigations into these murders have reached a dead end without any useful legal result. This is a serious dent on Nigeria’s public safety and national security. The lack of political will by the government, obstruction, and lack of enthusiasm by police to arrest and prosecute the masterminds underscore the mess. Police lack effective forensic investigative equipment. In the United States, new technologies have turned out DNA results that have enabled police and prosecutors to solve decades-old cases and free some persons wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Buhari can make a difference by ordering the reopening of all ‘cold cases’. Worldwide, with a few exceptions, there is no statute of limitation for murder. Those who take others’ lives and those who hire them to do so should never be allowed to escape justice. Crime should be separated from politics and punished accordingly. Beyond other direct negative impact on the lives of the surviving family members, the World Health Organisation cited psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt, and vulnerability.
The society is also weakened as homicide generates a high sense of general insecurity. The WHO adds, “When high rates (of crime) occur in countries with weak, inefficient and corrupt criminal justice systems, (they) can contribute to undermining social and economic development.” This encapsulates Nigeria’s situation, where murder is now perpetrated on an industrial scale by sundry non-state actors and sometimes by agents of the state.
Deploying sound detective skills, forensic tools and technology, the police should get to work. Police have admitted that the lack of basic modern investigative tools like fingerprint devices seriously hampers their work. There should be reforms of the police to emphasise investigation and intelligence, instead of the current large-scale deployment of personnel to bodyguard duties for VIPs. The critical factor is to muster the strong political will to restart ‘cold cases’ and provide closure for victims’ families.
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