Some reflections on justice
By Okey Ndibe
THANKS to Justice Akin Sanda, the world now knows that Mr. Iyiola Omisore had nothing to do with the assassination of Bola Ige, one-time Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. In exonerating Mr. Omisore of the gruesome crime, Justice Sanda brought one of the most riveting trials in the history of Nigeria's judicial system to, well, an anti-climactic close. I was stunned that the wise court did not give Nigerians the bombshell revelation that Mr. Ige had not really died!
For me, Omisore's acquittal was all too predictable. Anybody who followed the drama of the case could not but reach the conclusion that it was not, by any means, an ordinary case. Pardon me if you think I'm possessed of a conspiratorial mind, but I believe that those who should be catching Mr. Ige's killers may not be far removed from the plot to end his life.
Let's review the facts that are, at least, in the public domain. The former minister was killed by men who walked, unchallenged, into the sanctuary of his home in Ibadan. The reason his killers had such unfettered access owed to the fact that the minister's police detail " all of them " had left their post and taken a lunch break! A collective dereliction by several police officers whose charge was to secure the safety of a top government official. If that was not an amazing, incredible event, then there must be a strange new definition for amazing. In effect, a man whose ministerial mandate included the prosecution of all elements accused of federal crimes, was left, to speak metaphorically, naked.
Immediately after the tragedy, Abuja engaged in the usual hand wringing that, in many cases, comes across as feigned if not contrived. The political and law enforcement authorities expressed the same sentiment: that the perpetrators of the shocking crime would be brought to book. Soon, the police gave a list of suspects, including a young drifter named Adedamola Adebayo, but known by his circle of friends as Fryo.
In a dramatic twist, a young Lagos-based lawyer named Festus Keyamo announced that he had been approached to represent Fryo. In addition to handing the suspect over to the police, Mr. Keyamo also produced a sworn affidavit in which Fryo claimed that Omisore had once tried to entice him with five million naira to liquidate the ex-minister. But after a few days in police custody, Fryo recanted. He alleged that Keyamo had come up with the idea of implicating Omisore.
It was in the midst of this unseemly seesaw that the police arrested Omisore, a former deputy governor of Osun state, and indicted him on charges related to Mr. Ige's murder. Far from bringing direction and clarity to the case, Omisore's detention only seemed to impel the trial along a weirdly absurd trajectory. It took, I believe, four judges to look at the case at different times. One of them dropped the case as one might a smoldering piece of iron, claiming that there were pressures, from quarters he did not specify, to derail the course of justice.
Despite the fact that bizarre events are a commonplace in Nigeria, many people were scandalised when the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, selected Omisore, a detainee, as one of its senatorial candidates from Osun state. Even if Osun state did not have any other man or woman with the requisite credentials to run for Senate, Omisore's choice would still have appeared peculiar-and in wretched taste. But it got, as some poet said, curiouser and curiouser. Omisore the candidate won by a "moonslide," sweeping (I'm told) even Mr. Ige's hometown! Omisore joined a select company of men, the likes of Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia, and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria. These men have the distinction of moving from incarceration under abject conditions to the heights of political power in their nations. Indeed, it is no small feat for a man to exchange a prison address for one in the sanctum sanctorum of political power.
Yet, unlike the other men with whom he shared this rare distinction, Omisore can hardly claim to being a victim of wilful authoritarian subjection. Nor could he, in the public arena, persuasively press a case for himself as a man being persecuted for symbolising a noble cause. Who desperately wanted Omisore in Abuja, and why How did a man whose name was mentioned as behind Ige's assassination manage to win an election in Ige's backyard Was there some macabre semiotics to all this arrangement
History, definitely, will tell. It has become fashionable in Nigeria to ask bereaved members of a murdered socialite to leave it all in God's hands. Yes, in the fullness of time, even men who hoodwink their fellows and befuddle justice cannot escape the sanction of eternity. But more important, in a community that ought to uphold its secular identity, is the fact that the probing judgement of history reveals and execrates evil.
Given the trial's deeply controversial circumstances, Justice Sanda may have returned an inevitable verdict. But the trial, even by the judge's admission, was less than scrupulously pursued and prosecuted. It is a trial, I predict, whose inexplicable twists and turns are bound to haunt Nigerian jurisprudence for years to come. If federal prosecutors fail to bring their "A" game to the trial of a man allegedly linked to the killing of the nation's former primary law officer, then what kind of case will motivate them How many Nigerians who followed the trial will soon forget the bewildering events that finally forced the Ige family to publicly withdraw from the proceedings
I don't begrudge Omisore his "victory." But I am certainly curious to hear the man's explanation for his emergence as the PDP's senatorial candidate. I can't wait to read an interview where he would explain his relationship with Fryo. Now that the trial has been concluded, perhaps Omisore would give a tell-all interview on, among other issues, "the secret of my electoral triumph in Bola Ige's town."
Talking about the annals of justice, I confess myself awe-struck by an extraordinary development in a case to determine whether Governor James Onanefe Ibori was the man (of exactly the same name) convicted a few years ago of a crime. According to several newspapers, the judge who handled the case, Mr. Mohammed Auwal Yusuf, told an Abuja High Court that the governor was the man he convicted in 1995. Beyond dropping that bombshell, Yusuf also alleged that the governor's representatives had tried to buy his silence with a pay off of ten million "in any currency."
Like Omisore's case, the legal tussle starring Governor Ibori has mutated into a fantastical fictional plot. By now, there is agreement that one James Onanefe Ibori was tried and convicted. The question exercising the lawyers in the case is: Is the governor that man That the question is in contention at all is a sad commentary on the state of things in Nigeria. Nigerians, who would like to see themselves as belonging in the 21st century, must be chastened to discover that their state can't easily determine the identity of a convict. Of all the tasks a state may reasonably stink at, this is definitely not one.
A state that can't identify its convicts opens the door for common criminals to occupy its most exalted public offices. This may well be one explanation for the diseased state of public affairs in the country. I have said it again and again, that Nigeria is akin to a nation whose affairs are run, in the main, by men and women who deserve to be in jail for the rest of their lives. The unprincipled accent of the nation's politics, the elevation of corruption as the currency of political intercourse, and the adoption of 419 as the guiding philosophy of statecraft bespeak, I believe, a nation that has turned justice on its head.
