By Dele Sobowale

“The evil that men do lives after them….”

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, in JULIUS CAESAR.

I had indicated my intention to take us  down memory lane about the mounting cases of political murders committed by Nigerian political witches when the Federal Government announced the intention to revisit those cases.

Call it witch hunt or what you like, the fact is, there are too many cases begging for investigation and prosecution of somebody. Perhaps that will check the tendency to commit political murders. Recently, one of the suspects paraded by the police in Lagos “confessed” to participation in the murder of a politician during the last election. If the police are diligent, many more will be arrested in addition to the hired assassin.

However, political murders have been with us since 1999. Below, I reproduce an article written in August 2009, mostly because one individual who openly admitted his role in the mayhem in the Niger Delta is still alive and those he claimed hired him are still alive as well. Buhari might want to start from the known to the unknown.

HOW THE PDP CREATED THE MILITANTS  – 1

DELE SOBOWALE

“You mentioned that people are being used, dumped and killed, have you been used before?”

“Of course everyone knows I worked for the PDP in the first and second coming of the party. In Rivers State. There is no one who does not know that I was used to get votes for the party”.

“At what point were you invited by the government to assist in the elections?

“When the election was tough for the party and the areas which I conquered for them were many. I conquered many Kalabari towns, Ogu-bolo, Okrika, Nkoro, Opobo and all those places. They know, the government knows”.

Vanguard interview with Atake Tom, July 21, 2009, page 10.

In a three part series published on this page earlier in the year titled STALWART, CRIMINAL OR MILITANT, I had written authoritatively that the political class, especially the ruling party in each state creates its own class of criminals by first granting them the status of party stalwarts. Atake Tom’s confessions during this interview came as neither surprise nor shock to me.

Since then Nigeria had been visited with several political murders, and to the everlasting shame of the Nigeria Police, none had resulted in prosecution of anyone. In no state had the political assassinations been better documented than in Akwa Ibom State between 2009 and 2011. There was respite only after the 2011 elections.

Several groups of stakeholders had provided us with the catalogue of horrors in Akwa Ibom State between 2009 and 2011 when a declarative order was given by a powerful individual asking his political enemies to be crushed.

Yet the individual had never been questioned – suggesting official complicity in the crimes.  One does not need to be a crack detective from Scotland Yard or a top notch FBI agent to know that when only the political opponents of an individual and their relatives get killed or kidnapped then the place to start investigations is with the individual  –  even if all that emerges is circumstantial evidence. To leave such an individual untouched because he was highly connected is sufficient proof of official conspiracy.

In Lagos, Oyo, Ekiti, Rivers, Imo, Abia and even Nasarawa States, etc, we have scores of political murders unsolved. Why should we not hunt down the witches who devoured human lives at will? Why?

Despite this record number of murders, none of the Commissioners, the AIGs nor the Inspector Generals of Police, who served from 2001 to 2015 can claim credit for solving any of the murders. Was it incompetence or unethical neglect of serious crimes by those paid to secure lives?

ONE MORE ON FINANCIAL “WITCHES” HUNTED DOWN.

“We start this part of the book with allegations against Dr Chimaroke Nnamani and the Government of Enugu State.” Chapter 9, of PDP: CORRUPTION INCORPORATED.

When ex-Governor Nnamani, was accused of misappropriating Enugu State funds to establish private companies – including Rainbownet, Capital City Automobile etc, in 2006, his Chief Press Secretary, Dr Festus Adedayo, now plying his trade elsewhere in Nigeria, published an advertorial in the GUARDIAN on January 29, 2006 in which he made the following claim in defence of the former Governor.

“Yet, the fact that it [Rainbownet] is doing business in Enugu does not mean that it is owned by Governor Chimaroke Nnamani” (p 251).

Last week, on July 7, 2015, the lawyers defending Nnamani in his case against the EFCC, pleaded guilty on behalf of several companies including Rainbownet who were charged with the former Governor for embezzling N7 billion from Enugu State. The assets forfeited were valued at N5 billion.

Next time somebody like Festus Adedayo shouts “witch-hunt”, don’t be too hasty to believe him.  I did not; and that was why I took him to task in the book. There might really be a witch to be hunted down and eliminated. No thanks to Nnamani, Enugu State is now N5 billion poorer. Who made that “witch” a Governor over the people?

Once more, I feel vindicated by the court judgment.