Anger. Sadness. Sorrow. Disappointment. Devastation.
Revulsion. All these, and more, were what I felt on first hearing about
the gruesome murder of Eunice Olawale, the forty-two year old mother of
seven, an assistant pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God
(RCCG), and a deaconess at the Divine Touch Parish of the church, who
was in the early hours of July 10 killed by yet-to be apprehended
assailants while preaching around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa in the
Bwari area council of the FCT, Abuja.
By now, you already
know the details of how Olawale was murdered by suspected Islamic
fundamentalists and found in a pool of her blood with a copy of her
Bible, a megaphone and her mobile phone after she had left her home
around 5am that fateful day on ‘morning cry’ to preach in the
neighbourhood only for her husband and children to be confronted with
the devastating news of her death.
However, while Olawale has
already been laid to rest at the Gudu cemetery in Abuja, I believe the
matter and manner of her death cannot be put to rest yet until her
killers are apprehended and brought to justice. And this, I’ll add, also
involves all other outstanding unresolved murders in our country.
As
a country, I worry that we’ve more or less allowed unresolved murders
to be the normal and acceptable way of life here. We’ve become so bad at
it that if President Buhari, God forbid, is assassinated today, or a
state governor is killed this week, we may not be able to know the
killers in the months or years ahead and bring them to justice. This is
how terribly low we have fallen. And that’s why a former head of state
and a Minister of Justice/Attorney General of the Federation could die
in questionable circumstances and we still don’t know the real stories
behind their deaths several years later.
While he remains loathed
and despised even in death, the circumstances of the death of General
Sani Abacha when he suddenly expired on June 8, 1998, remains
controversial and shocking even though Nigerians were happy to be free
from his iron and dictatorial rule and trooped out to the streets in
wild jubilation on receiving the news of his death many hours after he
had long gone.
Nigerians heard stories about Abacha’s ill-health.
And there were other circulated stories about Indian prostitutes and how
he ate apples. Which do we believe? What’s false? What’s the truth?
What really killed Abacha? If he was taken out, who were behind it?
Almost
a month later, Nigerians again heard on July 7, 1998, the shocking news
that MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections,
had died suddenly. To hear that such man had died suddenly after taking
tea during a meeting with an American delegation at a time when he was
at the cusp of being released was too just hard to believe for
Nigerians. Abiola had been in detention for five years and suffered the
highest form of degradation and worst form of man’s inhumanity to man
yet he stood strong and didn’t betray the sacred mandate given to him by
the people despite temptations and severe threats to do so.
As a
secondary school student back then, I knew it was a bad one. I remember
seeing the front cover of an edition of TELL on the week he was supposed
to be released with a photograph of a smiling Abiola in a beautiful
flowing agbada and his trademark cap with his arms stretched out as if
saying to Nigerians “here I come.” Alas, it was a reunion that was not
to be.
Although I never met him personally, I wept bitterly on
hearing the news of Chief Abiola’s death as if he was my own biological
father. How could such a man, the symbol of a people’s struggle for
democracy, die just like that? Who did this?
Was Abiola
intentionally taken out by the Abdulsalami Abubakar government and its
allies to settle scores, balance the political equation and give Nigeria
a fresh start to democracy? Were Americans involved in the plot? What
really happened?
I still believe Nigerians have generally been
kept in the dark on the truth of all that transpired during that period
despite the various revelations at the Oputa Panel set up during
President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term in office.
Chief Bola
Ige, Nigeria’s former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the
Federation was also murdered two days to Christmas in his Ibadan home in
December 2001. Fifteen years later, his killers are yet to be brought
to justice. Yet, we keep carrying on as a nation as if it’s okay for us
not to know those who carried out such wickedness. In which other country does such sort of thing happen?
Of
course, there are many more of such cases. Remember Dele Giwa. Funso
Williams. Aminisari Dikibo. Marshall Harry. Jerry Agbeyegbe. Ayodeji
Daramola. Abigail and Barnabas Igwe. Isyaku Muhammed. Bayo Ohu. And many
others like that of Omololu Falobi, a brilliant mind, an outstanding
professional, one of my former bosses, and the founder of the
award-winning NGO, Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, who was
killed at Alagbado, Lagos, on his way home in 2006, exactly ten years
ago this year.
Sincerely, we reduce our humanity when people like
us, Nigerians, our fellow compatriots, are killed in questionable
circumstances and we fail to unravel the mysteries surrounding such
murders weeks, months, years and indeed decades after these evils are
perpetrated. Fortunately, we have government at various levels.
Unfortunately, they are not performing their responsibilities
effectively and efficiently. Fortunately, we have law enforcement and
security agencies whose job responsibilities involve overt and covert
investigations into cases as these. Unfortunately, they collect salaries
yet haven’t been able to deliver the expected results.
If there’s
the political will, I believe we can chart a way forward. There are
special investigative teams that can be assigned to work on these cases.
And we must prevail on the government to do this.
The recent
directive by President Buhari to the Acting Inspector of Police,
Mohammed Idris, to reopen the unresolved murders of Bola Ige and Dikibo,
a PDP former Deputy National Chairman, is refreshing. But it mustn’t
stop there. It’s really so important that we bring conclusion to these
cases. For the victims. For their families. And for our country. It is
for our collective good.
Premium must also be paid on training
more police investigators, intelligence officers and forensic experts.
Now is the time for the police to do their work with all professional
diligence. Even the media must equally keep a tab on them and follow up
on these investigations.
Eunice Adewale must just not die in vain.
No Nigerian, no matter his or her ethnicity, religion or for whatever
reason, must take another’s life extra-judicially. Whoever they are,
wherever they are, her killers must be arrested and made to face the
music. We just must henceforth put an end to this kind of barbarity in
our country. And let’s all fear God and embrace civility no matter our
religion, ethnicity or profession.
To the Eunice Olawale family,
and the families of the victims of Nigeria’s yet-unresolved murders,
please, accept my heartfelt condolences!
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