By Dan Amor
A calculated insult and the guilt preceded his death,
stealing from the actual murder all its potential impact and drama. There never
was a crime more dramatically rehearsed, and the tale only provides it could
not have been otherwise. Yet there are no clues to be uncovered, no enigmas to
be revealed; for this was a murder almost predicted like its predecessors. As a
principled and astute politician, even though he agreed to serve in former
President Olusegun Obasanjo's cabinet, Chief Bola Ige did not preach to
Nigerians.
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| *Bola Ige |
But he provoked questions and
left us in no doubt as to where he stood . He shared none of the current tastes
for blurred conflicts, ambiguous characters and equivocal opinions. Nor was he
disdainful of strong dramatic situations building up for firm climaxes. From
the critic's point of view, the plot of Ige's senseless murder, in its high
velocity treachery, summarizes modern Nigeria in one word:
"shame".
In his epic novel, Shame (1983), Salman
Rushdie, the Indian born controversial English writer, paints the picture of a
disconcerting political hallucination in Pakistan, which he calls
"Peccavistan" - existing fictionally as a slight angle to reality.
The major thrust of the novel is that the shame or shamelessness of its
characters returns to haunt them. Yet the recurrent theme is that there are
things that cannot be said, things that can't be permitted to be true, in a
tragic situation. To this end, fiction and politics ultimately become identical
or rather analogous. That so banal and damaging an emotion could have been so
manifestly created from within the Yoruba nation itself, is a ringing surprise
to us keen observers of that macabre drama. But the truth or falsehood of the
accusation or counter-accusation is not of the first importance.
The critical issue that must enlist our concern here
is Nigeria's
sick criminal justice system and the poverty of integrity of its police force.
Fifteen years after the well-planned assassination of the Chief Law Officer of
the world's largest black nation (Chief Bola Ige was a Minister of Justice and
Attorney General of the Federation when he was killed), his killers are still
walking the streets of our cities without challenge. In this sense, Nigeria is back
in mediaeval times. The Orwellian qualities and nightmarish implications of the
investigations make one sick since the whole exercise is as absurd as it is
puerile. Only in Nigeria
that a patriotic, brilliant and hardworking lawyer who turned in a prime
suspect to the police for prosecution, be arrested and arranged by the same
police before a court of law just to engage our false sense of judgment. Did
the police not declare Fryo wanted in connection with Ige's death? Only in Nigeria would a prime suspect in such a heinous
crime be declared winner, released from detention and sworn in as Senator of
the Federal Republic in an electoral contest he did
not even campaign.
