Bola Ige: Fifteen Years After

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.

*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.