In his tell-all autobiography, “My Participations”, former Osun State governor, Chief Bisi Akande, recounted the early hours of the murder of his political leader and the then sitting Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, noting the indicting salvo then President Olusegun Obasanjo fired at him.
The yet-to-be-solved murder of the country’s Chief Law Officer took place in his Ibadan residence on December 22, 2001.
Akande’s book which accused many top political operators of sundry misdemeanours and in some cases, outright crimes, is already generating ripples and reactions.
Recalling the moments the news of Ige’s murder was made known to him, the former interim national chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) wrote, “When we arrived at the Government House, I gathered my entourage together and broke the tragic news to them. There was an uproar – groaning and moaning and general confusion. Someone suggested we should pray. We bowed down our heads and prayed. By the time the prayer ended, I noticed that the Commissioner of Police was now with us.
“He had walked into the centre gingerly and was now standing close to me. Before we greeted, his phone started ringing. He gave me the phone. It was President Obasanjo on the other end.
“Now you see the lapses in your security! Look at what happened to Bola Ige!’ The President was shouting at the other end. I was enraged at him.
“You must be out of your mind Mr. President! How can you say lapses in my security when Bola Ige was killed in Ibadan? I rule in Osun State! I am not the Governor of Oyo State! When his cap was removed at the Ife palace during your wife’s chieftaincy ceremony, what did you do about it?’
“Obasanjo cut the line. I gave the CP back his phone. Everyone was silent except those who were weeping silently. Few minutes later, Obasanjo called back on my own line. He started sermonising. ‘You know that Bola Ige too was my friend! What happened was very unfortunate!’
“It occurred to me that what concerned the President more was not to arrest the assassins of his friend but to prevent social unrest and calm the nerves of the popular. I told him we would take necessary measures to prevent a breakdown of law and order.”
Speaking further on the first 24 hours of the assassination, Akande who was Osun governor then, said, “There was enough evidence that the government of President Obasanjo was reluctant to find the killers of Bola Ige. A day after the assassination I was with Governor Lam Adesina and other governors at the Government House, Ibadan, when I received a phone call from Major-General Abdullahi Mohammed, the Chief of Staff to the President.
“Mohammed, a former military governor, was also former head of the Nigerian Security Organisation (NSO), the precursor of the SSS and later Directorate of State Services, DSS. He was regarded as a strong pillar of the Obasanjo presidency. He invited me to come and talk to the President and that a plane had been dispatched to the airport in Ibadan to fly me to Abuja. I said I was not interested in talking to the President.”
