Bola Ige Murdered At The Heart Of Injustice In Nigeria - Dr. Olu Agunloye
Oluwatoyin Mathnuel -- Publisher
Insightmagonline INSIGHT MAGAZINE ONLINE NEWS
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| Dr Olu Agunloye |
Protocols
and Greetings
In
addition to standing on existing protocols, please permit me to greet all
the Awon Omo Ige here today and anywhere on the planet earth.
Some of them are current and past Governors, Ministers, Ambassador, Legislators
etc. including co-Guest Speaker, Chief Adeniyi Akintola, SAN who is here with
us. Permit me also to start by acknowledging the tenacity and resilience of
Comrade Awa Bamiji, the President, Bola
Ige Centre for Justice; President-General, Grand Council of Yoruba of
Youths; Promoter of Annual Memorial Committee and Chairman, Organising for
today’s Symposium. Comrade Awa Bamiji and his team have continuously kept Uncle
Bola’s name in the front burner since the sage was assassinated. I also want to
appreciate another set of Awon Omo Ige in the Bola Ige
Movement, including same Chief Akintola SAN led by me which kept the Bola Ige name
alive for ten years with events at celebrating his Life and Legacies at Premier
Hotel or University of Ibadan for the first ten years until the then serving
South West Governors who were Omo Ige
took over in 2011.
Part I: The celebration continues
I
have chosen to divide my contributions at today at this Symposium into two
parts, both of which to celebrate a man who insisted that he be called Uncle
Bola but who we knew and affectionately called multiple inangijes like Cicero, Iroko, Arole, Orator, Igede o, Kaduna Boy, an achiever who
created 400 secondary schools during his four-year term as Oyo State Governor
in fulfilment of his campaign promises, a man who touched the lives of millions
of people positively. I need to say all these to remind us that we are here
today to celebrate the life and legacies of an erudite scholar, a senior
advocate of law. An astute politician, a competent, credible and compassionate
man and a loving family man. A man who loved the common man with passion.
Uncle
Bola's greatest legacy was that he believed he had a duty to mentoring the next
generations. This was a man who as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of
the Federation had as main the issue of public justice. Notably, he embarked on
the programme for the reform of the Laws of the Federation, which led to the
Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 1999 (LFN1999) published in digital form and
could be instantly available to the public and practitioners at virtually no
costs; he mentored and got external funds for the reform of the 1999
Constitution and led the “resource control” struggle for the offshore oil of
the coastal oil producing states to justice from the Federal Government.
Indeed,
he was a man who fought for peace and justice as a student activist, lawyer,
Commissioner, Governor, Minister of the Federal Republic and Honourable
Attorney General of the Federation.
As
we celebrate the man who loved us with passionate commitment, let us get some
basic aspects clear. First is that Bola Ige did not kill himself. He met his
killer face to face and he dealt him a fatal single shot aimed at his heart.
Therefore, someone or some people assassinated him. God caught them in the act
and God knows them but majority of us are waiting for justice while some of
them are perhaps believing that they have got away.
Second,
the man who fired the shot did not act alone. He was part of a thoroughly well
planned Knitted Conspiracy Network which comprised of those who cleared the
way, those who subdued the household including a Judge of the Appeal Court of
Justice, those who provide covers and those who pervert the laws to
prevent justice.
Third,
the killing of Uncle Bola was brutal, senseless and barbaric, hurting and
hurtful. But it should not be misconstrued as the injustice. It is only a sign,
a signature, a symbol and a symptom of bad
governance, corruption and failure in the polity.
Fourthly,
the Irony of it all is that a Minister of Justice, who was at the same time,
husband of a serving Judge of the Court of Appeal of Nigeria was served with
raw injustice in his house and in the presence of his household including his
wife, children and grandchildren and for twenty years justice has not been
done.
Part II: The fingers of the other
hand
The
above shows why we must seek to identify injustice anywhere and fight it. Injustice
is discrimination, abuse and mistreatment racial treatment, poverty,
environmental degradation; it is something that is not fair or just; for
instance, when an innocent person is dismissed from employment for an offence
he did not commit; when the welfare and well-being of people are
constrained on the basis of gender,
sexuality, religion, political affiliations, age, race, belief, disability,
location, social class, socioeconomic circumstances or when inequality is borne
out of unjust rules, conditions or environment.
Injustice
is denial of access to wealth, education, employments and resources as well as
social, economic and political relationships amongst the people making a few
becoming greatly privileged with access to wealth, resources and power while
the less privileged become more greatly underdeveloped. Under this imbalance,
the few privileged people compulsively take to corruption to accumulate more
wealth, resources and power in unjust manner to maintain the unjust
socioeconomic and political systems, and unfortunately, the poorer and less
privileged ones also imbibe tendencies to leverage on corruption as a means of
acquiring wealth, resources and power to level up.
In
a nutshell, injustice creates inequality and imbalance which favour a few
people who then employ corruption as a tool to maintain the imbalance while the
exploited people also look forward to the same corruption tool to leverage a
leveller and take them out of poverty enclave and thus creating an
all-pervasive corruption environment.
If Uncle Bola were alive, he would send
another stern warning that injustice, corruption, insecurity, disorder and
anarchy are now the five fingers of the other leprous hand. This is because in
the twenty years after Uncle Bola’s assassination, unending injustice has
become great threats to human security which virtually derailed economic
security, food security, personal security, community security, and political
security and created unprecedented corruption, social and economic disorder and
emergent anarchy. In the period, Nigeria has disintegrated to a point where basic conditions and
responsibilities of government no longer function properly. The 2021 report on
Fragile States Index ranked Nigeria as the 12th most fragile state in the world
characterized by weak state capacity or weak state legitimacy leaving citizens
vulnerable to Boko Haram, banditry, criminals kidnapping for money and a range
of unwarranted dangers capable of undermining or destroying democracy.
Insecurity has
become the face of multiple crisis associated with bad governance in Nigeria.
There has been unabating reign of terror and actions of insurrectionists,
agitators and outright criminalities which have crippled economic activities,
significantly battered peace and the national social architecture.
Socio-economic crisis has become pervasive and caused significant damages to
the national fabric while the country steadily spirals into full blown chaos
making the slide to anarchy look virtually uncontrollable.
This is why Nigerians
must listen to the wake-up call of His Royal Majesty, the much-revered Sultan
of Sokoto that "Nigeria is in
trouble" because of "the citizen’s misdeeds, corruption and political
recklessness." leading to "banditry, insurgency and political
rascality causing loss of lives in the country." There is therefore an
urgent need to stop the breeding
multiplicity of effects injustice like banditry, kidnapping, cannibalism,
rapping, general social and economic disorders leading to more agitations, with
more youths taking to crimes and rituals and significant numbers of them
committing suicide. This is beyond the Bola Ige murder which was only a side
kick of the system of injustice being perpetuated in Nigeria and for another
twenty years after the Ige Assassination, this is snowballing into full
fletched anarchy.
Resolving
the Bola Ige murder is resolving the Nigeria, disentangling Nigeria and part of
the process of leading Nigeria from the uncharted parts of the Amazon. It is
not about Uncle Bola as he would not be revived from the dead until the ojo ajinde,
the resurrection day but about the next generation for which Uncle Bola devoted
his entire life, career, resources and integrity. It is about redemption of
Nigeria.
This is why the
Mr. President Muhammadu Buhari and his government should stop the slide to anarchy now; and avoid further actions that could
bring the country to its knees through breakdown of law and order, and should
boldly brace up for the insecurity challenges to stop the slide into total chaos.
Finally,
Nigerians should heed the wake-up call of the Sultan of Sokoto and embrace
principles of social justice for access to resources, equity, participation,
diversity and human rights to engender peace, progress and prosperity for
Nigeria because it is time to build a new model of Nigeria where peace and
justice shall reign.
Dr. Olu Agunloye
21 December 2021
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