Omisore: Long Walk to Freedom
He literally walked through the shadow of death and feared no harm. He had often sounded confident that he would be set free from the noose on his neck. He had had a troubled political career. From losing his Deputy Governor's seat in April 2002, he walked into Agodi prison, Ibadan, where he has been hibernating albeit choicelessly, after enjoying a 56-day freedom interlude. That was when he took his seat among the other 108 senators of the Federal Republic. Ever since then he had been fighting the battle of his life to regain his freedom and get his blemished name cleared. Yesterday, fate, padded with legal techniques smiled on him and he was discharged and acquitted in what many see as not only the perfect truth in the axiom that the law is an axe, it could swing in any direction, but also a confirmation of the pessimism of many on the nation's judicial system. Eddy Odivwri recaptures the high-marks of the Omisore battle, but still asks: So Who Killed Bola Ige?
In The Beginning
Otunba Iyiola Omisore charged his political ambition in the weird days of the late Gen Abacha political programme. Laddened with some good cash power from several government contracts, Omisore soon became an icon in the then United Nigeria Congress Party (UNCP). He was actively involved in the power caucus of the party at the time. He gave some good financial support and soon had a strong and burgeoning political structure. He had trained his eye and his ambition on the governorship seat of Osun state. He had occasional fellowship with the military aparatchik, with the aim of riding on their influence to get his dream realised. But all that perished the moment Abacha bit the dust. Everybody including Omisore was taken back to point origin.
He soon revived his structure at the birth of the Alliance for Democracy (AD), His financial weight, more than an integrity credential, made him a factor in the eyes of the puritanic leaders of the AD at the time. Tolerated more for his money, the Afenifere Wise men preferred to keep him under the shadow of a better puritanic apostle. To compensate him for his cash, he was "awarded" the governorship seat, not the governor as he preferred.
But his acceptance of this game was on the understanding that Bisi Akande will do a single term in office, after which he will graduate from being Thane of Cawdor to being the King himself. But not quite after the first two years, a tired Akande, who had indicated interest in serving only one term, was allegedly convinced by the late Bola Ige to do a second term. As the godfather, Akande agreed.
That was the beginning of the feud between Omisore and his boss, Akande. Omisore saw Ige as a man who was determined to 'put sand-sand in his Gar' and so, one way or the other, something had to give. It was peace.
The state was soon thrown into rounds and rounds of convulsive violence. It was either the State House of Assembly members were throwing chairs and tables at one another, or Akande and his deputy, Omisore were having fiery brickbats.
Indeed, peace soon went on a long vacation in the state.
The Grouse
Owing to the defined slit in the party and even the government in the state, Akande asserted his executiveness as a Governor and truly confined Omisore to not more than the 'spare tyre status' that he truly was. In fact, Omisore was a little less than a spare tyre. Once when Akande was travelling abroad, he had handed over governance to the Secretary to the State Government instead of his Deputy. No love was ever lost between both personages. Omisore, rather buffeted with the enormous pre-election financial means he offered the party and by extension, Akande, was reluctant to consider Akande as truly his boss. That complex helped to thicken the mix of the feud.
And so for some time, and till date, Omisore's salaries and allowances were seized. Several attempts to reconcile both men fell through.
Omisore, often combative and indecorous had boasted 'There will never be a true reconciliation between me and Chief Akande until the N23 million owed me on salaries and allowances are paid to me.'
And because the money was never paid, there was indeed, never any reconciliation. Omisore saw the hands of Ige in his travails.
Ige's Cap Episode
On December 15, 2001, Bola Ige, then Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, along with other "big men" had attended a chieftaincy ceremony in honour of the first lady, Chief Mrs stella Obasanjo at the palace of the Ooni of Ife. At the end of the ceremony, as Ige was walking out, he was attacked by some tutored political touts, who flung off his cap and tossed it among themselves like an article for gambling. Ige was humiliated.
Betraying his effusive volume of hate for the then Justice minister, Omisore , in an interview with Tempo magazine, on December 16, 2001, said 'Recently too, Bola Ige came on Radio here to insult me and my family. That is his last one. (Truly it was and eternally so). He was beaten yesterday, the people of Ife beat him up and he was crying like a baby as they removed his cap and his glasses.'
Before then, Hon. Olagbaju Odunnayo, one of the lawmakers in the Osun State House of Assembly, who was an avid supporter of Omisore had been murdered in cold blood.
After the incident at the Ooni's palace, events began to happen at dizzying speed in the state.
It was exactly one week after the Palace disgrace (of Ige) that he was murdered, also in cold blood, in his bedroom at Bodija, Ibadan.
His murder was a high profile incident that drew the attention of the international community. There were scores of questions that has since then, remained a puzzle on how a serving minister could be so very cheaply accessed and murdered in his very bedroom. ALL his security personnel, were said to have gone to eat.
Omisore's Journey to Agodi
After Ige's murder and burial which took place on January 11, 2003, the public was surfeited with the suspicion that Omisore must have a hand in the killing of Ige, given his telling pronouncements in published interviews in the media. Few months after, the AD engineered his expulsion from the party. He described it as a "huge joke" but it remained an irrevocable decree. He was thrown out of the party despite his resort to legal backing.
He was yet battling the expulsion, when the big one hit him. He was impeached almost effortlessly by the state House of Assembly. Having been thrown out of the party, and thus his platform of being in office, throwing him out of office altogether offered little problem.
Again, once he lost his party, and office, he also lost his immunity, which indeed had protected him from arrest and prosecution immediately Ige was murdered. One young fellow, Olugbenga Adedamola Adebayo, alias Fryo, had stunned the nation when he was presented by one Lagos lawyer, Mr Festus Keyamo, allegedly confessing that he knew about the plots leading to the murder of Ige. That the impeached Osun state deputy Governor, was the mastermind, and had actually offered some N5 million to enable them finish up Ige. Adebayo was arrested and interrogation opened. In his testimony, he had made inferences that suggested that the Federal Government gave a backing to Omisore.
The Government had a burden to prove its innocence. It was in this light that Vice president Atiku Abubalkar once invited Omisore after his impeachment and lured him into the police net. Then he had been walking through the various valleys of fire.
He was thus arrested and after a brief detention in Abuja, the charges of murder and conspiracy to murder, were properly preferred against him and was now made to face trial in an Ibadan High court.
Senatorial Seat from Prison
While in detention, electioneering period came. And to prove that he was sufficiently connected in the system, a point that confirms the suspicion of the public that he had government's backing in his dealings, he got the PDP senatorial ticket at a pre-arranged primaries, in a manner that mystifies electioneering in Nigeria. How he collected his form, how he completed it, how he got the Commissioner of Oath to sign it etc are all shielded in political mystery till date. Of course, because he was under a super-prop, he went ahead to stand the election in absentia, and even won in very bright margins against those who campaigned and did more. What's more, he was even said to have won massively at Esa Oke, Bola Ige's very home. It was bountifully weird.
Having won from prison, the Osun east senatorial district, the nation awaited how he would also serve as a senator from prison. But the designers of the scheme knew their tactics, a day after the inauguration of President Obasanjo, precisely May 30, 2003, one Justice Olagoke Ige granted Omisore bail, on grounds that he was very ill. Two days after the 'very Ill' verdict, Omisore sauntered into the Senate chambers to take his oath as a senator, He went ahead to become the senate committee chairman on industries.
The nation grumbled. And pressed with the public reaction, Omisore was re-arrested , 56 days after the bail, the full and proper trial began.
The Bola Ige's Disclaimer
Before Omisore was re-arrested, on one of the trial sessions, one of the prime witnesses, a former aide of Bola Ige , who indeed, witnessed the killing and had earlier said he could identify the killers if he saw them, went to court that morning to say that he could no longer identify the killers. It was a shock detour too much for the 72 year old Justice Atinuke Ige's widow to bear. He collapsed at home. He dies 24 hours after at the University Teaching Hospital, Ibadan. Having lost father and mother, the Ige family soon called themselves to order and announced their discontinuation of the trial of the murder suspects. They declared that they had lost their confidence on the system. Muyiwa, the eldest son of Ige soon fled the country. Ige's younger brother, Dele merely held out, albeit with fear. They said they have handed over the whole case to God, the most impartial judge of all mankind.
But Chief Debo Akande, (SAN) the Defence Counsel, who had asked for N25million but given N15 million for the case, swore to carry on. The Federal Government had given N5million to aid the prosecution of the suspects. Akande was convinced that the weight of the circumstantial evidence established against Omisore and the other 11 suspects will nail them and bring justice to Ige. Yesterday, his confidence was melted by the hunch of that blindfolded woman.
Omisore as an Albatross
Three times, three judges had to decline handling the Omisore case. The last one to drop it, Justice Abass had cited threats and intimidations as one of the reasons for his dropping the case. True, Omisore was merely confined to prison. H e was hardly treated as one. Perhaps he was the typical VIP (Very Important Prisoner). He had access to telephone, read all the newspapers, magazines, received volumes of visitors, held meeting with family members and political associates, and what's more he, on one occasion, participated in senatorial debate from prison. He was a privileged prisoner.
Last month , he had pleaded with the court to 'Please help clear my name of any blemish as I am completely innocent of the charges.'
Three weeks after, the court tallied with his wish.
The legal fire works
His team of lawyers led by Chief Idigbe (SAN) had sought several means to get Omisore out of the noose. He had applied for bail almost six times. He had appealed to a higher court, but was sent back, he had argued logically and casuistically all to get Omisore out. Once he told the court: The prosecution cannot approbate and reprobate on what constitutes the surrounding circumstances which prove the criminality of the accused with exactitude. In the absence of proof of the surrounding circumstances as proposed by the police reports, there is no circumstantial link of the appellant to the scene of the crime; 'adding that "a case cannot be based on beliefs, opinions, conjecture, and presumptions but on facts which the prosecution has failed to prove.'
With such arguments, Omisore regained his freedom.
But the question remains unanswered: Who then killed Bola Ige?
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