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Twist and Turns of a Murder case
Bola Ige
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Six years after the murder of former Attorney-General and Minister for Justics, Chief Bola Ige, a fresh angle is introduced to the saga
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Had death not been a journey of no return, perhaps,
the slained former Attorney –General and Minister for Justice, Chief Bola Ige, would have since taken a brief trip to earth to personally put the record of his assassination on December 21,2001 straight. This is because six years after his murder, controversy still trail investigations into the heinous crime.
The latest controversy over his murder was sparked off in the last days of the former president Olusegun Obasanjo regime, when during a television programme, he had alleged that a certain “drug baron”, was being suspected for the former minister’s murder. And then on May 25,2007, the former Inspector-General of police IGP, Sunday Ehindero, paraded one Alhaji Moshood Enifeni as the mastermind of the dastardly act.
However, the Enifenis are crying blue murder. The family insist that their son had noting to do with the murder and has described the linking of Moshood to the murder saga as, in their words “another dance on the grave of Bola Ige”
The Enifeni family’s protestation of their son's innocence over complicity in the murder was made manifest during a press conference which they called to state the family’s position on the issue. Described as "cock-and- bull story," the linking of Moshood to the Ige murder, the Enifeni family averred that “Nigerians are not gullible neither are they foolish to accept this latest shenanigan. The facts relating to the murder of Bola Ige are too well known to all.”
Admitting that Moshood sometime in 2001 indeed had cause to enter into a plea bargain with the prosecution in his trial over a drugs offence, the family however claimed that he had never before that period been involved any criminal act not to talk of murdering Ige. Alhaji Abdul Guniyu Olayiwola Enifeni who spoke unbehalf of the family, raised several posers which according to him, Obasanjo and Ehindero must answer. For example, the family wondered whether former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was referring to a private citizen like Moshood when he threatened to reveal the details over Ige’s death. The Enifeni family also wanted Ehindero and Obasanjo to explain whether their son was part of the ‘nest of killers' which professor Wole Soyinks once talked about. The family was miffed that a year after the former IG emphatically declared that the Ige murder case was closed, the same Ehindero turned round to parade yet another suspect over the murder. Ehindero had in an interview with Newswatch magazine last year declared thus: “I mean how can any person say that we have not found the killers of Bola Ige? Who murdered Bola Ige? From what investigation showed, we took the killers of Ige to court. The Attorney-General was satisfied with our investigation and that is why he arraigned them …one of the suspects is now a senator … so this idea that we didn’t get the people who murdered Ige is one I don’t understand.”
The Enifeni family therefore expressed anger over the public humiliation of their son. The Enifeni family: “we the family members of Enifeni feel particularly embarrassed, angry and apprehensive over his continual detention without taking him to court.” The Enifeni family then appealed all well meaning Nigerians to reject what they (the Enifeni family) term "this sham and charade." According to them "government that can “arrange” an election like the 2007 election is capable of arranging anything.”
Evidently down cast, Moshood’s wife, Kehinde, told The Source that her husband was being framed up but expressed strong confidence in God that the family’s breadwinner would eventually triumph over his enemies. She said: “I don’t know why they decided to do that, it was a setup. They set him up. But I know that God will see him through ... the truth will surely come out.”
Festus Kanayo, the family’s lawyer alleged also that a certain police corporal was browbeaten into falsely implicating Alhaji moshood and promised the policeman’s identity would soon be unmasked.
Indeed, few days after Ige’s murder, a certain Olugbenga Adebayo, alias Fryo surfaced and confessed of being in the know of Ige’s killers, a confession he later repudiated. Former Deputy Governor of Ogun State, Iyiola Omisore and other suspects, were later detained and arraigned over the murder. However Omisore was to later, to be acquitted.
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