IGE: HITTING A MAN ON THE GROUND AND FIGHTING THE DEAD
The saga of the current President of Nigeria, retired army General Olusegun Obasanjo will continue to confound people even after he is no longer in the public realm. Olusegun Obasanjo is a man who seems to be against all and his latest comments in the regard of the late Attorney General of Nigeria, the illustrious Bola Ige are not unusual but very unfortunate.
It is also a well known phrase that the evil that men do will be remembered after them. Perhaps this is what the President wanted to disprove by telling a wise nation at the twilight of his presidency that Ige was killed by some concocted drug barons. The President is an incredible story of discrepancies. He told the nation two weeks ago that he had some regrets over his failure over electricity and others but later ‘like a fallen masquerade pretending to be performing’ reversed to say he had no regrets! He went to sleep on Ige’s matter for more than seven years and suddenly awakened to the need to do a story before leaving Office in two weeks! He was in the thick of ‘wars’ in Anambra, Bayelsa, Ekiti and particularly Oyo but refused to commandeer his Police lapdogs or the Oyo PDP Government to find the killers of his friend and Attorney General after the Ladoja Government opted to close the case file.
Ige was slaughtered on December 23, 2001 in his bedroom at Bodija , Ibadan in Oyo State where he was a civilian governor from October 1979 till September 1983 and until his death was a deputy leader of the Afenifere - the foremost Pan-Yoruba group. Ige was undoubtedly a foremost Yoruba leader with very high visibility.
Bola Ige was invited to participate in the 1999 first term regime of Obasanjo and never mind the justifiability or otherwise in his agreeing to participate. His participation gave Obasanjo the leeway to stabilize his zero acceptance in the South Western part of Nigeria and he owes the Cicero a lot of thanks. Obasanjo is not considered by the Yoruba as one of the leaders up till today, if free and fair elections are allowed in Yoruba land, Obasanjo and any associate will lose woefully.
The participation of Ige in his government was not to the advantage of unity of purpose in the Yoruba land but he (Ige) was a revered leader and therefore his participation brought a lot of breathing space to Obasanjo.
Ige submitted a letter of resignation to Obasanjo on December 19, 2001 after heeding several letters and calls for him to quit so as to help consolidate the progressive base in Yoruba land. In fact, this writer like many others inundated the Cicero with appeals to quit the government and help to re-unite the Southwest.
Ige was assassinated on December 23, 2001. That was 5 days after submitting his letter of resignation. It is now about six years since Ige was gone but his killers are free in Nigeria and perhaps all over the world. The governments at both the Federal and State have chosen not to go after the killers while the Police had some months ago told a surprised Nigerian world that the murder case was closed. The speaker? the number one man in the Police who is also a lawyer!
The President in his characteristic display of unpresidential protocol some days ago took over the job of the Police which had told a helpless nation that the Ige murder was closed after it could not get any clues or way forward. Olusegun Obasanjo told the nation that Ige was murdered by a drug baron.
Remember the same President did the same when a zonal Chairman of his party - PDP , Dikibo was gunned down. He went to the Press barely 24 hours after the murder to say that the poor man was killed by armed robbers while his Police became dumbfounded because they were yet to commence investigations!
To all the followers of the Ige murder case, this ‘drug baron’ story from the out going President is a diversion because the son of Ige, Muyiwa saw the assassin with the gun on the day of killing and again during one of the Court hearings. The first child of Ige, Mrs. Adegbola dutifully countered the President to tell who the drug baron is, why it took him this long to say this and importantly to add that his father gave a letter of resignation to the President on the 19th December, 2001 and got killed on 23rd December, 2001. The poor daughter went further, to prove more points that the President was just being uncharitable to describe his father in low terms. The final note from her was that God would judge which to some people is a poor soul’s prayer.
To all people with human compassion and even the adversaries of Ige, the family of Ige needs some sympathy having lost their father to a brutal killing, their mother died after seeing the way the case was ‘somersaulted’ and a family friend - the brilliant Ibadan man of integrity, Akande out of frustration.
To all real respecters of God, do we need to be reminded that it is unAfrican to speak ill of the dead? Does it make sense to attack a dead man who is not a position to defend himself? Is it part of fair rule to hit a man on the floor?
Some actions make people to marvel at the incomprehensibility of the supreme being. His ways are never that of men indeed. The Psalmist too informed that the wicked do prosper sometime while the people wonder if God is watching but the same Psalmist reminded He is coming and very swiftly, to pay unto each and everyone according to his deeds.
The President really confirmed some speculations concerning Ige’s brief time in the Mines and Power where the Cicero had wanted to work with his greatest vigor. Obasanjo removed the chair from under Ige in the Mines & Power Ministry because the latter was going the popularity route by declaring that he would turn ‘stones to bread’ there. That must be to chagrin of a domineering person like Obasanjo who saw himself as the only one to get credits for all actions. Obasanjo publicly admonished Ige over his statement by saying he did not know what he meant by his promise and subsequently appointed someone else to supervise the power sector leaving Ige with apparently no control over the sector as the man in charge of power sector was to report directly to the only righteous OBJ. Ige should have quit then but he had a political point to score against his fellow Afenifere over the then fresh Alliance for Democracy presidential primary debacle. Who knows if he would be alive today with his wife if he had not gone to bed with Obasanjo’s government?
Why on earth would the President describe the Ige as someone who could not differentiate between his ‘right and left hands’ in the Mines and Power? After all, OBJ ridiculed the superior intelligence of Ige by making him useless over same Power sector. Is the President on the same pedestal level if placed against Ige - the lawyer who went to a formal University, an established master and an acknowledged man of letters?
This writer as a member Bola Ige Vanguards was unhappy when Ige agreed to serve in the 1999 Cabinet of Obasanjo and joined others to write him to quit. The President, like his friends, ex friends who had suffered in his hands and others know, enjoys dominating. Ask the former PDP Chairman from Kogi or the one from Plateau. This is why he finds it difficult to belong in the comity of people with superior intellect and education unless they allow him to dominate over them.
He had morbid hatred for Awolowo and had to write with derision in his book against the acknowledged sage even after his death. He had only negative comments for Abiola when he was in jail and in the grave!
He knew why his book making jest of Awolowo would be good only for himself and cronies if it was published while the greatest leader since 1959 was alive and only published after his death.
In the same vein, he knew that the Ige who was more accepted by the Yoruba and still in death, would not allow him to get away with such words as “not knowing the difference between his right or left hands”, he acted the coward that he truly is, by waiting till his death.
Is the President a better man in intellect, education, politics and most human endeavors than Ige?
The President has an unenviable history of betraying his friends or cutting of the hands of people who have helped him with their hands. Ask the family of Kaduna Nzeogwu despite the pretense on display, the family of Ige, Theophillus Danjuma who vowed to go on exile if his friend did not win in 1999 and many others who are yet to recover from the real Obasanjo they did not know.
The full truth about men and women who connived to kill Bola Ige, Dokibo, Funso Williams, Harry Marshall and many others between 1999 and 2007 will be unraveled after Obasanjo and if not immediately but definitely before long. It took the aftermath of Abubakar Abdulsalam before we know who were Sergeant Rogers, Mustapha, Bamaiyi and Company. The popular Yoruba adage says it all: that it takes a single day for truth to catch up with all the evil doers and their lies even though they might hide for years.
The harm by regimes will always be corrected by the succeeding regime while it is unfortunate that the evil people do see themselves as the good people when people of conscience do not speak up. If bad people are not identified and told of who they are, they tend to see themselves as good people in the nation.
The same goes for all these hungry men and women who parade some suspicious higher degrees because their letters and words on the internet belittle the attached degrees and do not conform to the real deals. There are hordes of Nigerians who live abroad but who are not disentangled from the impoverishing tactics of Nigerian leaders at home. These hordes are found on the internet and other media using the sponsored internet spaces to virtually look for favors from many State Governments in Nigeria and also from the Federal Government. By their seeds, they shall be known. These men are only doing the bidding of their pay masters in Nigeria and do not want to stand on the side of the people, hence avoiding issues of popular interest to the Nigerian nation. These are the people who run around the corridors of power asking for contracts or appointments to the detriment of the people because they sell their souls to the dogs.
Nigerians should look for food to eat but not through bloody means and those abroad should watch for some of these suspicious higher degree holders who think they could use any one to sell their dirty wares at home.
In the matter of 2007 elections, most Nigerians and all well wishers of the truth are in one agreement that Obasanjo organized the worst, most fraudulent one in the history of Africa and particularly in Nigeria. The lapdogs of history do not want to annoy their paymasters and have been trying to rubbish the truth by alluding that the elections were otherwise. The International monitors including the Obasanjo government sponsored people found nothing good to write home about in the April elections in Nigeria while a former Secretary of State from United States had to say this openly obviously with disgust. Yet some internet men working for some interests other than that of Nigeria or Nigerians have been trying to ‘color’ the darkness of April 14 and 21 in white.
Posterity will definitely have no sympathy for men who refuse to stand for the truth because of food while those who choose to remain silent in the face of tyranny or fraud will have their conscience to worry about for as long as they live.
Whoever kills will also have death as a sentinel at the door of his life no matter how long he or she lives.
John Ayodele,
Atlanta, USA.
