The Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that the Obasanjo government knows the truth about the murder of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation at the time, Chief Bola Ige.
He thus wondered why neither the government nor any one after it had made genuine efforts to find the killers and bring them to justice.
Speaking on the impunity that, he claimed, currently pervaded the country, especially in terms of the confusion that beclouded the judiciary over the trial of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, Soyinka noted in a statement on Tuesday that history was knocking at the door.
He said, “Impunity stalks the land, indeed it is virtually lording it all social interstices. Let no one take my word for it – simply turn the pages of the media any day. Impunity’s ravages churn the mind. Somehow, this nation – and here again we turn to our learned friends – this nation generally failed to recognise, much less learn from the murder and enabling implications of the unsolved murder of Bola Ige, the nation’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. The Bar Association accepted the casual disposition of its erstwhile captain and has – understandably perhaps? – moved on.
“Amnesia is often a contrived tactic of escapism, which, to put it bluntly, is another word for moral cowardice. I have brought it up principally to remind the judiciary, and associate orders such as the (Nigerian) Bar Association, that the war between impunity and justice is an incessant one. Corruption is not a trait to be trivialised for political opportunism or locker-room guffaws. Corruption murdered the nation’s Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, and justice was rendered helpless in the defence of its own prime advocate. The reign of impunity will prevail as long as the legal community continues to betray its calling, its oath of office, even its rites of professional collegiality and its responsibility to the rest of us.
“It is disappointing that even under a government that promised to dust up the files of political murders and end that reign of homicidal impunity, the association has not thought fit to demand from the Buhari government its findings. There is more than ample material to warrant a judicial commission, and that demand has come up again and again. It will continue for as long as there remains a shred of conscience somewhere in this nation, especially when provoked into resurgence by the antics of those who murdered justice to enthrone corruption and bask in the miasma of impunity.”
“As always, election time brings out the worst of animalism in political participants. Justice was betrayed on that edition, repudiated, hung up to dry, and the door left wide open for commissioned killers. Bola Ige, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, died in the line of duty. Justice Salami at least survived the rites of passage.
“The government at the time of Ige’s killers knows the truth. That government protected -I repeat- protected, and rewarded his killers. Those who wish to dispute this had better first immerse themselves in the circumstances of that murder, and the unconstitutional, indeed illegal trajectory of the principal accused, one that not only facilitated his unconstitutional participation in the ensuing election but catapulted him straight to the occupancy of the seat that had been kept warm for him during his trial and absence. On release, he was ushered straight into the slot of Chairman of the Appropriation Committee of the House of Representatives. That was not all.
“The head of that government, General Olusegun Obasanjo, proceeded to burnish Ige’s memory with characteristic zeal. With that victim in no position to defend himself, that inveterate letter-writer sent a reference letter to Ige’s new abode – just in case there are ministries of power over yonder: “We put Bola Ige there to rectify the power situation. It turned out that he did not know his left hand from his right.”
