By Jide Ajani

10 years after the gruesome murder of Chief Ajibola Ige, no person has been successfully prosecuted in the typically Nigerian manner of unresolved high profile murders. This is the story of the murder of Bola Ige and the issues surrounding it.

The main entrance in either of the wings of the house leads to the visitors’ parlour. Another angular access to the left or right depending on which wing you’re in, leads to the main living room.

It was in that parlourn that the dastardly act began to unfold that fateful Sunday night of December 23, 2001, in Bodija Estate, Ibadan, Oyo State.

It was the residence of Chief Ajibola Ige, the Cicero of Esa Oke, then deputy leader of Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-political and economic association, and serving Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation at the time of the murder.

Till date, the number of those involved in the killing is unknown and couldn’t have been known.

The identity(ies) of the killers more so in the absence of the former.

Yet, uncle Bola Ige, as he is fondly called, was supposed to be the minister in charge of the law in a country of clashing ethno_political interests.

That fateful night, just between the hours of 8:45 and 10, the unexpected happened – and the killers did not spend all of 75 minutes to carry out their operation.

Late Bola Ige

For Ige, he had just returned from Lagos in the company of his son, Muyiwa, and an uncle who had just been dropped off. His security aides, sensing that Oga had settled in, took a walk away from the house.

Whether those who committed the murder laid in wait before the arrival of Ige, or whether they trailed him all the way from Lagos, sensing that he could as well retire to Esa Oke in Osun State, or whether as matters subterfuge go, it was one of the security aides (knowing what was to strike) who dropped the hint of strolling on his colleagues, or whether the killers were called to come and strike after Ige’s arrival at home in Bodija, we may never know.

Indeed, there are many things we never knew then and there are still many things unknown today.

But to the things that are known.

Firstly was that the killers stormed the house. They came heavily armed.

With guns to their heads, they marched Muyiwa and other members of the family in the house into a room. They locked them up.

Another group headed straight for Ige’s bedroom.

According to Muyiwa, “When we heard the gunshot in the room where we were, we knew something had happened to my father but there was nothing we could do because we were locked up. Later, my sister and my nephew came and I told them that we were locked up in the room by the assassins. When we gained entrance from the room where we were, I rushed to my father’s room and saw him in the pool of his own blood lying down helplessly. I applied mouth to mouth resuscitation but it was too late”. (SEE INTERVIEW)

The first wave of news about Ige’s death was as confusing as it was unbelievable.

Ige had died in a motor accident!

Ige had been attacked by armed robbers!

Ige had been attacked by assassins!

The common denominator in all: Death!

The man died.

But if Ige’s death was egregiously dramatic, getting his killers and putting them up for trial was even more egregious..

Theories and Scenarios of all sorts were beginning to emerge:

Who could have killed Ige?

What were they after?

To achieve what!

For Ige, who had prepared his letter of resignation with a view to coming back to his Alliance for Democracy, AD, so many persons and forces were fingered as having a hand in his death.

In the interview with Muyiwa, allusions were made to the incident in Ife, at the palace of the Ooni, just some days earlier. There was also the insinuation that some forces in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, did not want Ige to again mobilize the AD preparatory to the 2003 general elections.

In any case, the manner of the capture of the states in the South West geo_political zone by the PDP (apart from Lagos) lends credence to that insinuation. There were even more uncharitable theories: One suggested that perhaps Ige’s caustic comments may have been the cause.

We may never know. In the midst of all these, a certain Fryo was arrested as a suspect. The same Fryo began to plead insanity at some point. And even when the case went to court, its handling, according to Muyiwa, was less inspiring. “If you follow the proceedings of the trial, you would know the roles everybody in the case played.

At a point, the government that took over from Alhaji Lam Adesina turned everything upside down and the person who was supposed to be prosecuting the case was going to Adedibu’s house to beg for promotion. There was a situation when somebody won election from Agodi Prison, a prime suspect for that matter. Because of temporary gain, some people preferred to look the other way in the case that affected a man who was by the time he was murdered a sitting Attorney General and Minister of Justice”, he lamented.

But in a chat with Rasheed Ladoja, the sitting governor of Oyo State at the time the case was allegedly bungled, he said his administration did not refuse to prosecute the case contrary to the information in town.

“Let me tell you what happened but first, let nobody say that my administration entered a plea not to prosecute the case; that was not what happened. The case was taken from one judge to Justice Abbas and it was prosecuted. There was no time we entered a plea not to prosecute. Late Debo Akande, SAN, was the lawyer prosecuting the case and there was no time we discontinued the case.

“In fact, it was the state government that paid the legal fees of Akande.

“We did not use the state Attorney General so that people will not come out to say we did not want to prosecute the case well so we went for an experienced lawyer like the late Akande, SAN. Mind you, the case was withdrawn from one judge and then given to Justice Abbas to handle.

“Don’t also forget that it was the same Justice Abbas who withdrew or canceled the bail granted to Iyiola Omisore. Mind you, Justice Abbas made it clear that Omisore should be tried in the case so we never at any time entered a plea not to continue prosecution. Why would we pay the legal fees and then enter a plea not to prosecute a case that every Nigerian was interested in its outcome”, Ladoja told Sunday Vanguard.

10 years after, the murder has not been pinned on any individual.

In the review of the book, BOLA IGE: The Passage of a Modern Cicero, back in September, 2003, Mohammed Haruna, said he had “always found Uncle Bola fascinating as a subject. By common consent he possessed a brilliant and incisive mind and was as sharp with his tongue as he was with his pen. On the few occasions I had the opportunity to meet him, he always struck me as a man with a large heart”.

His review, titled DEATH AND THE CICERO, went further to explain that “Yet this man with a sharp mind, a sharp tongue, a sharp pen and a large heart was a consistent advocate of the superiority of the Yoruba race. Herein lies my fascination with the man.

“How, I have often asked myself, could a man with all these virtues and who, himself, says he is a left-wing socialists, believe in the supremacy of any race? The man himself would, of course, be the first to deny that he is a supremacist when he speaks of the superiority of the Yoruba. Most of his admirers, many of them gathered here, would agree with me… Both himself and his admirers would say his position is merely one of pride in his own race.

“If that were the case objectively, no one would quarrel with that position. I am Nupe, or what the Yoruba would call Tapa, and I am proud to be one. Everyone should be proud of his race. However, pride in one’s race is one thing but to believe, as Uncle Bola did, that one’s own race is all virtue and no vice or that other races are always the villains of piece and never the heroes, all this is altogether another thing.

“Personally, I believe Ige was killed because, almost too late in life, he realized that one could not build bridges using ethnic supremacy and cult_like politics as the foundation”.

The family has lined up a series of activities which would be fully reported next week.

Read Bola Ige’s son interview here titled: My father’s planned secret mission – Ige’s Son