Eunice Olawale, her killers and Nigeria’s unresolved murders

Anger. Sadness. Sorrow. Disappointment. Devastation. Revulsion. All these, and more, were what I felt on first hearing about the gruesome murder of Eunice Olawale, the forty-two year old mother of seven, an assistant pastor with the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), and a deaconess at the Divine Touch Parish of the church, who was in the early hours of July 10 killed by yet-to be apprehended assailants while preaching around Gbazango-West area of Kubwa in the Bwari area council of the FCT, Abuja.

By now, you already know the details of how Olawale was murdered by suspected Islamic fundamentalists and found in a pool of her blood with a copy of her Bible, a megaphone and her mobile phone after she had left her home around 5am that fateful day on ‘morning cry’ to preach in the neighbourhood only for her husband and children to be confronted with the devastating news of her death.

However, while Olawale has already been laid to rest at the Gudu cemetery in Abuja, I believe the matter and manner of her death cannot be put to rest yet until her killers are apprehended and brought to justice. And this, I’ll add, also involves all other outstanding unresolved murders in our country.

As a country, I worry that we’ve more or less allowed unresolved murders to be the normal and acceptable way of life here. We’ve become so bad at it that if President Buhari, God forbid, is assassinated today, or a state governor is killed this week, we may not be able to know the killers in the months or years ahead and bring them to justice. This is how terribly low we have fallen. And that’s why a former head of state and a Minister of Justice/Attorney General of the Federation could die in questionable circumstances and we still don’t know the real stories behind their deaths several years later.

While he remains loathed and despised even in death, the circumstances of the death of General Sani Abacha when he suddenly expired on June 8, 1998, remains controversial and shocking even though Nigerians were happy to be free from his iron and dictatorial rule and trooped out to the streets in wild jubilation on receiving the news of his death many hours after he had long gone.

Nigerians heard stories about Abacha’s ill-health. And there were other circulated stories about Indian prostitutes and how he ate apples. Which do we believe? What’s false? What’s the truth? What really killed Abacha? If he was taken out, who were behind it?

Almost a month later, Nigerians again heard on July 7, 1998, the shocking news that MKO Abiola, winner of the June 12, 1993 Presidential elections, had died suddenly. To hear that such man had died suddenly after taking tea during a meeting with an American delegation at a time when he was at the cusp of being released was too just hard to believe for Nigerians. Abiola had been in detention for five years and suffered the highest form of degradation and worst form of man’s inhumanity to man yet he stood strong and didn’t betray the sacred mandate given to him by the people despite temptations and severe threats to do so.

As a secondary school student back then, I knew it was a bad one. I remember seeing the front cover of an edition of TELL on the week he was supposed to be released with a photograph of a smiling Abiola in a beautiful flowing agbada and his trademark cap with his arms stretched out as if saying to Nigerians “here I come.” Alas, it was a reunion that was not to be.

Although I never met him personally, I wept bitterly on hearing the news of Chief Abiola’s death as if he was my own biological father. How could such a man, the symbol of a people’s struggle for democracy, die just like that? Who did this?

Was Abiola intentionally taken out by the Abdulsalami Abubakar government and its allies to settle scores, balance the political equation and give Nigeria a fresh start to democracy? Were Americans involved in the plot? What really happened?

I still believe Nigerians have generally been kept in the dark on the truth of all that transpired during that period despite the various revelations at the Oputa Panel set up during President Olusegun Obasanjo’s first term in office.

Chief Bola Ige, Nigeria’s former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation was also murdered two days to Christmas in his Ibadan home in December 2001. Fifteen years later, his killers are yet to be brought to justice. Yet, we keep carrying on as a nation as if it’s okay for us not to know those who carried out such wickedness. In which other country does such sort of thing happen?

Of course, there are many more of such cases. Remember Dele Giwa. Funso Williams. Aminisari Dikibo. Marshall Harry. Jerry Agbeyegbe.  Ayodeji Daramola. Abigail and Barnabas Igwe. Isyaku Muhammed. Bayo Ohu. And many others like that of Omololu Falobi, a brilliant mind, an outstanding professional, one of my former bosses, and the founder of the award-winning NGO, Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, who was killed at Alagbado, Lagos, on his way home in 2006, exactly ten years ago this year.

Sincerely, we reduce our humanity when people like us, Nigerians, our fellow compatriots, are killed in questionable circumstances and we fail to unravel the mysteries surrounding such murders weeks, months, years and indeed decades after these evils are perpetrated. Fortunately, we have government at various levels. Unfortunately, they are not performing their responsibilities effectively and efficiently. Fortunately, we have law enforcement and security agencies whose job responsibilities involve overt and covert investigations into cases as these. Unfortunately, they collect salaries yet haven’t been able to deliver the expected results.

If there’s the political will, I believe we can chart a way forward. There are special investigative teams that can be assigned to work on these cases. And we must prevail on the government to do this.

The recent directive by President Buhari to the Acting Inspector of Police, Mohammed Idris, to reopen the unresolved murders of Bola Ige and Dikibo, a PDP former Deputy National Chairman, is refreshing. But it mustn’t stop there. It’s really so important that we bring conclusion to these cases. For the victims. For their families. And for our country. It is for our collective good.

Premium must also be paid on training more police investigators, intelligence officers and forensic experts. Now is the time for the police to do their work with all professional diligence. Even the media must equally keep a tab on them and follow up on these investigations.

Eunice Adewale must just not die in vain. No Nigerian, no matter his or her ethnicity, religion or for whatever reason, must take another’s life extra-judicially. Whoever they are, wherever they are, her killers must be arrested and made to face the music. We just must henceforth put an end to this kind of barbarity in our country. And let’s all fear God and embrace civility no matter our religion, ethnicity or profession.

To the Eunice Olawale family, and the families of the victims of Nigeria’s yet-unresolved murders, please, accept my heartfelt condolences!