By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
“The first
thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” – William Shakespeare, Henry
VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2
Tamuno Igbikiberebima is an unlikely star in an action movie. He is a lawyer employed with Nigeria’s national hydro-carbons monopoly. On 17 December, 2020, Tamuno was home in Rumuigbo, in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, contemplating Christmas in the season of COVID-19 and on his phone in front of the gate into his premises, when a Toyota Camry car pulled up beside him.
From
the bowels of the car, a young man emerged armed with what the police later
confirmed to be an AK-47 rifle and ordered him into the car. Tamuno had the
presence of mind to ask why, to which the young man reportedly responded that his
mission was to waste him. Tamuno takes the story from here:
“When I noticed how he was handling the gun, it appeared to me that he is not proficient in gun handling. I told myself that ‘ordinarily one-to-one this man cannot beat me.’ ….When he faced the nozzle of the rifle down trying to cock the gun, I started struggling with him.
