Ige's murder is another danger signal for Nigeria's nascent democracy

Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com and NigeriaCentral.com

A sad event occurred in Nigeria with the December 23, 2001 assassination of the country's federal Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Bola Ige.

Why should we care, as Nigerians, Africans or as Houstonians. Or, in fact, any where else in the U.S.?

First, it is a rather painful metaphor for how awry and insecure citizens and international investors have since become under the almost 3-year old government of Nigeria's retired Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, that his own chief law officer for the 110-million Nigerians and former Govenor of Oyo State (1979-1983) was murdered in his own bedroom in the Yoruba city of Ibadan.

Second, it basically opens the door for the few attentive and informed analysts of Africa's and Nigeria's politics and democracy to increase the valued and critical interest of the U.S State department and the White House to the dangers which besot Nigeria's latest efforts at returning to a democratic society, and allow them to examine facts beyond the saccharine persuasions of Obasanjo's multimillion dollar lobbyists in Washington, Atlanta, Houston, New York and elsewhere.

As I wrote in Houston Chronicle's Outlook page and a number of other U.S. newspapers on May 14, 2001, day of Obasanjo's meeting with President George W. Bush, in Washington D.C., democracy and economic development must rest on the domestic infrastructure of a country. You attract international investments when lives and properties are safe; just basic safety and development equation.

Third, is a significant point, still on the question of national and individual security; namely: if gunmen can make it into the bedroom of Nigeria's chief law officer in the same state he served as Governor (1979-1983) , millions of Nigerians are definitely not safe regardless of what Gen. Obasanjo and his canvassers say on the pages of Nigeria's local newspaper and to the international community.

Fourth, and of historical significance (although it would seem that Nigeria and Nigerians rarely learn from history but giddily repeat the deadly errors of those who led previously), Ige's murder and the overall violence in the same southwest Yoruba region (Obasanjo's ethnic origin), in the early 1960s and 1983 fuelled the fires which burnt down the nascent democracy at the time. Therefore, these all seem, yet another dangerous flashback to the 1960s crises in the same Western region of Nigeria which latter plunged the whole country to the grip of political instability and military coups. Are the recent intraparty violence and hiring of assassins any way to run a democracy? Is this any way to claim to be the giant of Africa? Are these the ghost of things to come? It seems more like Democrazy!

I recall calling the Ibadan residence of the late Ige, fondly called the Cicero of Agodi from USAfrica's office in Houston on a certain Sunday around noon in September of1998, just before the elections which marked the return to civilian rule in the country of almost 110 million.

Ige spoke to me about his hopes for a better Nigeria, remarking that a lot of work needs to be done. Alas, he joined the work but the goons of disorder and merchants of death abruptly cut a remarkable man who spoke many languages and adapted to many situations. I spoke my native Igbo very briefly to him, and he replied very well. And, we soon continued in the English language.

Amidst these recent events, Gen. Obasanjo, as usual, was "scheduled to travel out of the country", to Zimbabwe; that, another irony and metaphor for a president who has had one too many global junkets that he's better known as the frequent flier president.

Obasanjo, seriously, needs to shift his focus and efforts to Nigeria, get his own house in order.

Nigeria needs more mediation and presidential responsibility by Obasanjo and Co for its multifarious conflicts, legitimate environmental and human rights concerns of its components, national and individual security needs more than increasing the defense budget or promoting more non-combatant Nigerian generals some of whose biggest "battles" have been downing a big bowel of fish pepper soup with pounded yam !

I am not a political prophet but a realistic graduate of political science and public administration, hence I make bold to caution that if Nigeria's democracy takes its bizarre turn to demoCrazy, the stability and viability of the country becomes a real issue for frank debate. Afterall, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, former president (not warlord!) of the defunct Republic of Biafra (1967-1970) may still have to continue his recent debate with Obasanjo and others especially Nigeria's minister of state for defense Mrs. Dupe Adelaja who foolishly called Igbos "traitors" for their historic fight for self-defense and for a zone of geopolitical safety at the time called Biafra. That's an issue for another day.

But it's truly sad that some of Nigeria's leaders and political appointees still believe that state-sponsored bigotry can be an instrument for governing and a meal ticket for desperate political hacks, pseudo-intellectual pipsqueaks and moral lilliputians who have wrecked Nigeria's better destiny.

No matter how one looks at it, Ige's murder, the murder of public servant of almost 40 years is a bad omen for Nigeria's democratizing effort. With the sad event of Ige's death, a dangerous alarm bell has been sounded. Will Nigeria's political elite make any sense of it. The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind....

An iroko has fallen in the Nigerian forest. Rest in peace, Chief Ige!
Chido Nwangwu, recipient of the Journalism Excellence award (1997), is Founder and Publisher of USAfricaonline.com (first African-owned U.S.-based professional newspaper to be published on the internet), USAfrica The Newspaper, NigeriaCentral.com and The Black Business Journal. He also serves as an adviser to the Mayor of Houston on international business (Africa) and appears as an analyst on CNN, VOA, NPR, CBS News, NBC and ABC news affiliates.

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