Following the judgement delivered last week by a Lagos High Court that the former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, and Alhaji Lateef Shofolahan, should face death by hanging for their complicity in the June 4, 1996 murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, BANJI ALUKO takes a look at the situation of other high profile murders in Nigeria.

THE day came, and like a dream, judgement was delivered on one of the longest criminal trials ever in the history of Nigeria. In the judgment, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, the former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, and Lateef Shofolahan were convicted over the murder of the late Kudirat Abiola, wife of the supposed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, Chief Moshood Abiola. The case had been in court for more than 12 years with five different judges presiding over it at different times.

But the judgement was perhaps the first time the trial of a high profile assassination in Nigeria would be brought to conclusion as there are numerous of such trials still in court or already foreclosed.

Some of these include those of Bola Ige, Pa Alfred Rewane, ANPP chieftain Chief Harry Marshal, Chief Aminasori Alfred Dikibo, Engineer Funso Williams, Bagauda Kaltho, Dr Sola Omatsola, Dipo Dina, Odunayo Olagbaju and Barnabas Igwe, all victims of high profile assassinations. Their names are just a handful on the long list of unravel assassinations in the country.

Indeed the entire Nigerian system is replete with uncompleted investigations. Many years after their killings, the police are yet to furnish the nation with concrete evidence to believe that the perpetrators of such acts and the victims have found justice.

Last December, loyalists of the former Attorney General of the Federation, Chief Bola Ige, marked a decade of his gruesome murder in his Ibadan home. The former Attorney General of the Federation was murdered in cold blood in his home on December 23, 2001. At the wake of his killing, numerous arrests were made and many believed that the police were closing in on Ige’s killers. But today and ten years after, the police is yet to find the killers after some window-dressing trials that left the courts with no other choice than to dismiss the case against those charged.

Those who were arrested including  Otunba Iyiola Omisore, who won  election into the Senate in 2003 while in detention over Ige’s murder, have since regained freedom courtesy of no case submission entered by the former government in Oyo State. Sadly, today, as far as investigation and prosecution into the Ige murder case are concerned, matters still stand as they were ten years ago.

On December 19, 2001, Hon. Odunayo Olagbaju, then a member of the Osun State House of Assembly was murdered in his home town of Ile-Ife. Many believe that his killing was connected to the political imbroglio between the then governor of Osun State, Bisi Akande, and his deputy Iyiola Omisore. Olagbaju, then was believed to be a close ally of Omisore and one of his supporters in the state House of Assembly.

And like Ige’s murder, it appears Olagbaju’s killers will not be brought to book. An indication to this was the pardon granted the four convicts in the murder case by Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State as part of activities marking his one year as governor November last year.

The murder of Alfred Rewane on October 6, 1995 came to many as a shock. By the time the great Itshekiri leader was killed, he was not nursing any political ambition. He had retired to enjoy the fruit of many years of labour. And to to kick start investigations into his murder, the Police rounded up Alfred Rewane’s domestic staff and announced that the killers had been apprehended and would shortly be charged to court.

But the announcement turned out to be a mere public relations exercise.

And on January 10 last year, a death knell was sounded on the  murder case as a Lagos High Court discharged and acquitted the only two suspect in the murder—Lucky Igbinovia and Effong Elemi—who had been standing trial since 1995.

The trial judge, Justice Olusola Williams, held that the prosecution failed to prove its case against the two accused persons beyond reasonable doubt. The court held that it was clear that the prosecution had nothing to support their case as there was no evidence to support the charges levelled against the two accused persons.

Justice Williams said, “It appears to me that, all what the police did was to visit the scene of the crime and arrested workers of late Pa Rewane.

There was no evidence to support the alleged statements the prosecution relied on. I cannot rely on the statement brought by the prosecution.

The charges against the defendants failed, they are hereby discharged and acquitted.”

As for the murder of Engineer Funso Williams, who was a two-time governorship candidate in Lagos State, investigations into his assassination seem to have faded away. Williams had been tied up, stabbed and strangled in his Lagos home on July 27, 2006. After over nine months of painstaking investigation, the police paraded three mobile policemen and six civilians including a private guard as being responsible for the cold-blooded murder of Williams.

Consequently, the then Inspector General of police, Sunday Ehindero, named Sergeant Okponwasa Imariabe, Corporal Tunani Sonani and Mustapha Kayode of the Police Mobile Force(PMF), all attached to the late Williams until his death, as active collaborators in the planning and murder of the Lagos politician. But about five years after the police paraded the suspects, nobody has been nailed for the murder.

While at least prosecution was initiated over the killings of Bola Ige, Alfred Rewane and Kudirat Abiola, the same cannot be said of those of Baguada Kaltho, a reporter with The News magazine, Bagauda Kaltho, and the former Chief Security Officer at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Dr. Sola Omatsola as their murder prosecution were barely started.

Kaltho, on his own, would later be labelled as agent of the pro-democracy group NADECO, who as killed while trying to detonate a bomb.

It would seem that each new high-profile murder gives Nigerians more reasons to be sceptical about the ability of security operatives to unravel the masterminds of such killings. This is because the security operatives saddled with the responsibility of unravelling the killers have always had one excuse or another in creating an alibi for their inefficiency.

After the death of Dipo Dina, a former governorship candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Ogun State, a former spokesman of the Lagos State Police command, Frank Mba, while speaking on reasons the police had not been able to unravel the faces behind some of the high profile killings in the country, blamed the unresolved murders on the Nigerian press, politicians, and the public. He accused the press of distracting the police and other security agencies in their investigations. Mba claimed that the drive by newsmen to create sensations through catchy headlines often distracted investigators in their duties.

He also linked the inability of security agencies to unravel the killers of Nigerians, whose deaths had generated controversies, to paucity of funds. The police image maker gave an example of  such case in which he was a member of the investigating team, during one of his foreign missions. Mba also stated that politicians and the Nigerian public also hindered investigative activities by undermining the process of investigations.

On his own, a lecturer at the Institute of Conflict Resolution in the University of Ibadan, who declined to give his name, stated that the problem starts and ends with the police.

“The police have shown that they are largely incapable of fighting crime, not to talk of unravelling  perpetrators of high profile assasins. There is also serious corruption and interests in the force that prevents investigation and prosecution. We have situations in this country whereby the police got serious leads into the murder cases, but the trials will just fizzle away all of a sudden,” he stated.