Column
Bitter Pills
By Des Wilson
Nigeria’s Unresolved Assassination Cases
Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic situations that create huge inequalities
– Pope Francis
Writing about the subject of assassination is a tough social responsibility, especially as it has to do with resurrecting memories and hard feelings. Of what use will these stories be to those living,especially members of families that are still grieving from the pain inflicted on them by ‘unidentified’, ‘unknown’ and heartless criminals who believe they have the right to terminate a life when it pleases them. For history’s sake, such acts serve as reminders to the fact that the world is still a dangerous place to be. It reminds us too that the world is an unsafe place for the gentle, for even the enemy can be found within your walls.
Incidentally, this crime is credited to individuals, groups or governments that may consider someone as the jigger in their toes which they must get rid of.
The dictionary defines the verb, ‘assassinate’, as the crime of killing a famous or important person, especially for political and other reasons which may revolve around a rivalry for political, economic or ideological supremacy. You don’t need to be important to carry out this crime because assassins, those who engage in this despicable business, are usually nondescript persons who may have some traces of mental instability. Sponsors usually choose them in order to obfuscate any possible links to them. These criminals are sometimes killed by their sponsors, or some of them may commit suicide when there is a manhunt for them.
Investigations of possible culprits are usually difficult, especially when assassinations are sponsored by government or its agencies. This is why it is always difficult to get immediate answers to the puzzle. Politicians in government and their agents often display signs of callousness when they possess dead consciences too. Government leaders sometimes do not care about one of their own if they are on the side of truth. These are sometimes those who are totally screwed up with society and it seems pretty easy to talk them into it.
Victims of assassinations may be political rivals of some politicians, or those who stand in the way of sponsors from achieving their goals. Such victims include those killed in a military coup d’etat (failed or successful), or those in a cut-throat rivalry within political parties or business associations, or even in struggles within academia for the position of Vice Chancellor, or any other rivalry in the civil or public service, or even shear hatred for the opponent.
If we take a cursory look at the shortlist of persons at the national and state levels whose murders have never been fully explained, we can see that there are strong reasons for Nigerians to worry about the future. Some of those assassinations are disguised as other crimes, as when some prominent Nigerians are kidnapped or when they are shot on the streets, and the crime is linked to armed robbery.
Sometimes a not-so-prominent relation of the target is kidnapped and wasted or kept in captivity hoping that the prime target will renounce his ambition for a post. The semantic difference between an assassination and a murder is that the victim of the latter must be an unknown person like me. So, you kill or murder a village poor but you assassinate the politically rich or wealthy. Today, terrorism has been added to possible alibi for the crime.
This crime is not unique to Nigeria but is a pastime of politicians and business men and women everywhere who think the world should revolve around them alone. The Gun Powder Plot in 1605, captured in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was my earliest historical contact with this crime which was attributed to some Catholic faithful who wanted to kill King James I and blow up the British Parliament. Since the plot failed, the assassination plot did not make any impression on me, until the Soviet-linked assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1962. It looked so gruesome that even though I was a boy and nowhere near anything American, I prayed that JFK should not die.
When the Arewa coupists attacked and killed Gen Johnson T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi in July 1966 along with his host Governor, Lt. Col Francis Adekunle Fajuyi, I also cried and wished they would still be alive, especially because the Biafran propaganda of the period along with the African ‘bush telegraph’, kept the rumour mills alive. They believed nothing could happen to the crocodile which was General Aguiyi-Ironsi’s totem.
The American CIA was known to have plotted the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, using surrogate rebels. They did the same thing in Chile when they assassinated Salvador Allende whom they killed in 1973, and Che Guevera, the Bolivian revolutionary, who fought with Fidel Castro of Cuba and was killed in 1967 by the CIA. Henry Kissinger was widely known to be behind most of the assassinations of foreign leaders.
In Nigeria since independence, we have had a harvest of assassinations from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1966), General Murtala Mohammed (1976), Dele Giva (1986), Pa Alfred Rewane, Mr Fusho Williams (a contender for the governorship seat with Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Lagos State); Mr Bola Ige, Minister of Power in Gen Obasanjo’s administration; Alhaja Kudirat Abiola Femi Oyewo; Marshall Harry (2003), Chief (Mrs) Tejuoso, Dr (Mrs) Ingrid Essien Obot (Unical), Isyaku Mohammed (2012). There are many more among some of the present day actors who were accused of master minding the crime in Akwa Ibom State between 2007-2015.
Other well-known foreign assassinations include those of Elvis Presley, Malcolm X, Dedan Kimathi, Steve Biko, Muammar Gaddaffi, Saddam Hussein, Abraham Lincoln, (America’s 16th president), George Floyd of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) fame.
The puzzle which still remains is why do humans kill important persons who differ from them in their philosophy or political outlook? And I would like to ask these persons the simple question: ‘If killing people is wrong, why do we kill people to prove that killing people is wrong?’