BEFORE YOU DIE: AN OPEN APPEAL TO MR. OLUSEGUN OBASANJO

BEFORE YOU DIE: AN OPEN APPEAL TO MR. OLUSEGUN OBASANJO

By Oluwaseyi Oduyela/Washignton,DC

Dear Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo

This is totally out for character for me to directly write to people I dislike but I think it is important to do this.

I took the decision to write this open letter to you, not as a response to your fallacy of dualism (letter to Jonathan Goodluck) but because of two events that took place recently.

I have been trying to distance myself from the fact that you and I share the same month and do not want to remind myself that you were born on the day my sweet, loving and caring maternal grandma died (March 5); but your birthday and recent statement from one miscreant- Iyiola Omisore, (the man you made a senator from prison in 2003) about the death of Chief Bola Ige, you dear friend and late Minister of Justice. Omisore, through his political town crier, denied killing Chief Ige. According to Punch report, Omisore said that “a son of late Chief Bola Ige, Muyiwa, is acting the script of some unnamed persons to tarnish his (Omisore) image.” To add insult to injury, Omisore’s town crier, Diran Odeyemi said, “It is unfortunate that Muyiwa who Otunba Omisore paid his fees is now being used to disparage him.

Chief Bola Ige was killed on December 23, 2001 in his Bodija home. You visited in the company of your VP, Atiku Abubakar and you vowed to find his killer. And in what looked like a circus show, Iyiola Omisore was impeached and arrested. Most people who did not know you thought justice was on its way for Ige’s murderers, but they were all wrong. Under your nose, Baba, the man who was arrested, charged and detained for the murder of your friend and Justice Minister was fielded by your political party as a senatorial candidate when he was still a member of Alliance for Democracy. You pretended not to know, you ignored it and the murder suspect won the election from prison, subsequently, he was miraculously released after Andrew Olotu recanted his earlier testimony and declared that he was forced to testify against Omisore. Baba you did not cry foul, but when Tafa Balogun, the Inspector General of Police submitted the report of his investigation on James Ibori to you, sir you said “Tafa, you can do better than that, go back and redo it.”

Knowing well that no one from Ige’s party will fight for justice because you knew damn well that they would all want to jostle for appointment, you did nothing.

Let us say that Oyo State government under Lam Adeshina and Rasheed Ladoja screwed up with the murder trial, Ige was a federal officer at the time of his murder which made it also a federal case, but you did nothing to pursue the federal angle to finding the killer of your longtime friend.

Now at your old age. How would you want to be remembered?

Yes, there are people who witnessed the murder, people who had knowledge of the murder and they are still living but do not have the balls to come out and talk. Even Prof Wole Soyinka, Ige’s friend and your friend too, said during Ige’s funeral that his friend’s killers were amongst the crowd at Liberty Stadium that day. (I believe that Soyinka was not talking figuratively; unfortunately he has not come forward with names and proof.)

May I advise that you come clean on Ige’s death sir?  Baba, who killed Ige? Why did they kill him? What do you know about it? If you think you are not answerable to us because we don’t matter, I want you to remember that there is one person you will return to and who will ask you this same question-(GOD); even though He knows the answer.

Looking back into your career sir, if there is any military officer lucky in Nigeria, it is you. You are lucky because you never participated in any coup, but have been a beneficiary of coups. You enjoy taking credit from other people’s efforts. You were greeted as Civil war Hero because the Biafra Army surrendered to your Command while the like of Benjamin Adekunle remain unsung Hero of the civil war. After the ouster of General Yakubu Gowon, you became the second-in-command to Murtala Mohammed and after the assassination of Murtala on February 13, 1976, you, an ‘unwilling candidate,’ was forced to take over as the Head of State. The position you held for 3 years. You are the only military ruler in the history of Nigeria who handed power over to a civilian government. You were not removed through coup. You retired peacefully.

When you were arrested and jailed for your alleged involvement in a coup plot against late General Sani Abacha, luck became your middle name again leaving the prison alive but your second-in-command during your tenure as a military Head of State was not lucky, Major-General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua died mysteriously in Abakaliki Prison.

You came out of prison to become the first Nigerian former military ruler to come back as a civilian president. So far, you hold the record of being the only civilian president that successfully completed two terms in office. Shehu Shagari was ousted by Buhari and Babangida in 1983, few months into his second term in office.

No one could have considered himself luckier than you, who won where his fellow Yoruba failed. Late MKO Abiola was believed to have won the election but was never sworn in because Babangida annulled the election. The 1993 election was the freest and fairest in the history of Nigeria. Chief Obafemi Awolowo attempted to become President but lost.  Awolowo and Abiola ran, they spent their resources but you? People came to your Otta farm and Agbe l’oba house in Abeokuta to beg you to run. They made money available.

Orji Uzor Kalu came to pick you up from Yola prison and vacated his Ikoyi bedroom for you because at that time, Baba, you had nothing in your Otta farm house.  Kalu gave you money and your party PDP to run for election. You said it yourself that you came to government with less than 20,000 Naira and like a poker player, by the time you left the poker table your 20,000 Naira became billions of Naira. From just Obasanjo Farms and Bells School, you became owner of companies including NICON Hilton and many more.  These and many more have made you the most powerful leader of the most populous black nation in the world and by extension, wanting to become the most powerful man in Africa.

People said that you have a history of being ungrateful to those who helped you. They call you a user and dumper. In fact in your own words, you’re “A fi’bi su olore Baba Iyabo” meaning “the ungrateful wretch Iyabo’s dad.”

I don’t know how others feel and look at it, it is surprising that you’ve got more death in your government than even General Sani Abacha’s government or General Babangida. Let us face it.

1. Architect Layi Balogun, former presidential aspirant lost his life in the hands of assassins later tagged-armed robbers.
2. Air Commodore Anthony Ikhazobo former Minister and NFA chairman was killed in 1999 and his killers are yet to be brought to book.
3. Uche Orji a senatorial candidate of All Nigeria Peoples Party ANPP for Imo state was killed in wake of the 2003 elections nobody has ever been apprehended.
4. In 2002, two murder cases were reported in the Eastern part of the country, the state Nigeria Bar Association Chairman was killed in Anambra state, Arthur Nwakwo’s younger brother was killed, the killers are still at large.
5. Chief Harry Marshal, a former chieftain of People’s Democratic Party and later coordinator of All Nigeria’s Peoples party presidential campaign in South South was murdered in his Abuja home only for the Police to parade some people as armed robbers confessing to have killed the Chief. According to the robbers they went after the chief because of the campaign money they heard was with him. The question they did not answer or which they have not been asked is who informed them that Harry Marshal was collecting any money?
6.  Chief Bola Ige, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in Obasanjo’s government was killed in 2001 December.

There are others who lost their lives in your government since 1999 that I cannot mention. From May 1999-July 2004, there were 574 cases of extra-judicial killings of innocent citizens carried out by the men-in-black. Disappointedly your government failed to close all these murder cases and their killers are still working free.

Yes, I remember the January 27 2001 Ikeja bomb explosion too, to date Nigerians still don’t know what happened that day and why. Baba, you were supposed to visit that bunker at Ikeja Cantonment at 4:30pm that fateful Sunday; suddenly you changed the time to around 2pm. Explosion went off at around 4:30pm when you were supposed to be in the bunker.

In 2002 or there about, one of your wives, Mama Deboye died in a motor accident on her way from Abuja to Jos. Before Mama Deboye, your wife who came out to campaign against you during your bid for the United Nations Secretary-General position died mysteriously. She was assassinated and her killers are still at large almost more than 10 years after. It does not bother you to find who or what killed your ex-wife.

So Stella is the third wife of Mr. Obasanjo to die on you. Coincidentally, the Belview aircraft crashed few miles away from your village, Igbogun in Ifo Local Government, Ogun State.

In conclusion, it would be a great service to Nigeria if you can give Ige’s family the closure they need by shedding more light on the circumstances surrounding the death of their father and your longtime friend. We will also like to know how and why your party fielded of Omisore, a murder suspect, as a senatorial candidate while being charged for the murder of your Justice Minister. Keeping quiet and dying with this information would be an injustice to the late Justice Minister. Omisore may have the acquitted by the court, the court may have declared him not, certainly he is not innocent and you are not too, not even Bode George, Atiku, or Sunday Afolabi in his grave.