http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/columnists/thoughts/2010/ikenna-jan-30-2010.htm

South West elastic murder chain
By Ikenna Emewu [ikenna@sunnewsonline.com]
Saturday, January 30, 2010

On Sunday, the list of assassin victims in the South West got lengthier with Dipo Dina joining the odd club of bizarre victims last Monday. The zone is not alone in this trend, but theirs have been high caliber murders of prominent personalities. It grieves all reasonable Nigerians that a bad tradition may have been given the breath of life and wings to fly over the land with brutal death and terror in its wake.

That is how it starts in Nigeria like a harmless joke until it takes roots and consumes all of. We may pass for a people adept in entrenching bad values so fast. Like a harmless joke also, kidnap was given birth to by the oil militants some few years ago, or by Obasanjo as a prominent Nigerian alleged. It didn’t take time before the infestation swept all over the nation. At last after the incubation in Niger Delta it blossomed into full life in my area in the South East. It has become a tradition the whole country cherishes because it serves political and economic purposes that aid the users to dominate their targets.

In the mid 90s, the story we were told is that some political hounds in Ibadan felt a certain woman among them had better and faster access to Aso Rock in the days of the hooded butcher. The Ibadan henchmen saw to it that Suliat Adedeji was neutralized so that they would have their way in Aso. The woman fell and her assailants had their way as planned. Can any Nigerian say the killers of Suliat were caught till today?

In December 2001 the killers struck again in Ibadan, and their prized trophy was the dear life of Chief Bola Ige. The noise and condemnation and the price tag of the do-gooders reached the heavens on how they felt the incident. They promised to give the head of John the Baptist to the man who gives clues on Ige’s killers. At last, nine years after, all dissolved into empty noise and grandstanding. Ige rests in peace or pieces with his blood crying out loud till today for justice that may never come. That was the sitting Attorney-General of the Federation, former executive governor of a state and husband of a serving Court of Appeal justice. Nothing came out of the wild goose chase on Ige’s murderers. Even the one they said had some connections to who did it who had been detained without any verdict of acquittal or conviction later won election from detention without a contest. The last story may be that nobody killed Ige or maybe he never died or he killed himself. Possibly because of the people involved, Ige’s killers may never be found.

Chief Lai Balogun later joined the list of the unsolved political murders. We have not heard anything apart from the “investigation is still in progress” rhetoric.
Before the 2007 election would be thought a reality, Dr. Ayo Daramola, an expert economist and World Bank outstanding personality, the kind of expert every reasonable society wishes to have, was murdered in Ekiti for ever saying he might be interested in the 2007 election. Alas, even the ones accused of undoing him to dominate in the 2007 election never had their way. The same line of silly high-sounding nonsense of promises from the government followed.

Till date, we can’t say who was arrested or tried for Daramola’s murder. After taking stock of these failed investigations and unsolved murders, you would wonder what actually the police do. These issues are known because they involve outstanding persons. Hundreds of others of the unknown class go the same way unnoticed.
On that morning of July 27, 2006, news filtered out that Funso Williams had been murdered in his home in Dolphin Estate, the whole Lagos gathered. Many shed tears – some from the eyes of the crocodile, some from human eyes. We all later dispersed and waited for the big promises from the police chief then of how they will leave no stone unturned to pick Williams’ killers maybe hiding under the stones.

After some months, the magic was laid bare when nine persons were paraded by the police as the killers. Can you remember hearing anything about those nine thereafter? Years have passed and we have not seen any stone turned or those behind the act shown to us. In one of such killings, some detained suspects were filed out of the prisons and shown to the press as suspected killers with a promise to them by the police that if they accept to be the hired killers they would be released after the police drama on TV.

Now Dipo Dina has joined the long list of political murder victims whose perpetrators may never be found. We hear of prize money placed on killers and how we would reward those that find them. Now, who is the killer, who is to reward the killer and who looks for the killer? It is a tangled web. You won’t even know who needs to fish out who and where the person to be fished out came from to strike and where he is hiding after the act. The heavens know more than enough.
As we shed our deceitful tears for Dina, you read these annoying stories of he being on his way for spiritual cleansing when he met his death. In another, they will show you the river he was heading to. And I ask, is spiritual cleansing new among our political voodoo masters? Spiritual cleansing and spiritual contaminations, which is better? Is the penalty for spiritual cleansing in a river death? If that is the case that Dina who was going for cleansing should die, then what should happen to those that embark on spiritual contamination to contaminate the entire nation with their evil?

Moreover, if it is so easy to know and unravel what Dina was going for before he died, so why is it too hard to fix something as simple as the killers who exist somewhere. His mission was in his mind and remains so with him in the mortuary, and the killers are still material beings walking about, so which is harder to find – that in the mind of a dead man or the human beings in the society. My real fear away from the silly talks of Dina’s mixed multitude mourners and their ways is that these blood spilling are enough to make the South West think twice on how to arrest this mad horse on the loose before it grows into a bigger and more woeful ruin.

The South West has been driving too rough and recklessly on the political tussle lane to observe basic rules of caution, and it is worrisome. We may do something fast together because in the days to come in a country where things dwindle continuously, it might mean no one would be safe in the South West to contest elections. If that happens, then the murderers and their sponsors would find time to take over the entire space unhindered.

I think we have more than enough evil in our political environment that we don’t just need this continued killing of opponents. There are over 50 political parties and opponents of Dina in politics and those who wanted him dead know themselves. I have no powers to conduct police investigation, therefore I believe the police verdict that robbers did that. But I was so happy they admitted not ruling out political assassination. The days ahead will prove some of us who slant more to political assassination very right because I am dead sure Dina’s murder will join the ever growing list of unsolved political killings like those of Harry Marshal, AK Dikibo and the rest mentioned here earlier.

A colleague told me on Thursday that the content of the file in The Sun library on political assassinations are too many and chilling, and that showed that the virus has circulated round the infested political system of the nation. That confirms the fear that those who killed Suliat Adedeji in the mid 90s actually succeeded in sowing the evil that germinated to blossom into the various arms of killings we have harvested since then.

So?

Mekusxyz, what is all this Yoruba bashing? Don't you know you're embarrassing yourself? Please stop. . . . . . . . .

And I care?

Let these people work their differences out while we solve our own problems like the kidnapping epidemic that has taken over the SE!

ezeagu:

Mekusxyz, what is all this Yoruba bashing? Don't you know you're embarrassing yourself? Please stop. . . . . . . . .

What's wrong with someone posting a newspaper article here?

Did Mekus write the article?

ezeagu:

Mekusxyz, what is all this Yoruba bashing? Don't you know you're embarrassing yourself? Please stop. . . . . . . . .

South West elastic murder chain
By Ikenna Emewu [ikenna@sunnewsonline.com]
Saturday, January 30, 2010

This is the basher above, that is if you call the presentation of facts bashing. You can send him an email asking why he is bashing Yorubas.

Sunny_bobo:

What's wrong with someone posting a newspaper article here?

Did Mekus write the article?

Can you prove that he didn't write the article?. Articles are not written by ghosts.

Sunny_bobo:

What's wrong with someone posting a newspaper article here?

Did Mekus write the article?

No mind am. Ezeagu has eaten the bug of idiocy.

So you people don't know what context is again, have we totally forgotten Mekusxyz's trends on nairaland? And what are Igbo people doing getting involved in Yoruba issues?

ezeagu:

So you people don't know what context is again, have we totally forgotten Mekusxyz's trends on nairaland? And what are Igbo people doing getting involved in Yoruba issues?

Should be more like what are Nigerians doing getting involved in Nigerian issues

One Nigeria!!

ezeagu:

So you people don't know what context is again, have we totally forgotten Mekusxyz's trends on nairaland? And what are Igbo people doing getting involved in Yoruba issues?

Mekusxyz is pregnant with Oduduwa junior[illegitimate].

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-389321.0.html


I just wish they lock him up with Akingbemaru in the same cell for 3 months. May be Yoruba and Igbo can kiss and make up from these two tribal giants.

Why are people paranoid over nothing?
Is the article factual? Yes
Was it written by Mekusxyz? No
Was it already online? Yes, with link provided
Is there any tribal bashing by the author? May be, may be not, depending on who is judging
Aloyemeka and Ezeagu should find a sit in the garbage bin. What audacity?

Sunny_bobo:


Should be more like what are Nigerians doing getting involved in Nigerian issues

One Nigeria!!

Do not make me sick! One Nigeria?  

This region is of no concern of mine. If I put any input about this issue, our Yoruba brethren would say I am getting involved in Yoruba affairs.

Mekusxyz:

Why are people paranoid over nothing?
Is the article factual? Yes
Was it written by Mekusxyz? No
Was it already online? Yes, with link provided
Is there any tribal bashing by the author? May be, may be not, depending on who is judging
Aloyemeka and Ezeagu should find a sit in the garbage bin. What audacity?

We all know your intention in posting this article here so there's no point in arguing. . . . . .

The earlier you guys realize that we are in one country, the earlier you will be cured of your paranoia and misuse of the word tribalism. As citizens, we all have rights to discuss issues pertaining to any part of Nigeria. Anambra gubernatorial candidates had a political debate recently. Guess who was among the jury? Reuben Abati, a Yoruba. He was invited by Anambra people because we are of one country. Any attempt to blackmail anyone with this trite tribalism thrash will not wash, at least not with me.

ezeagu:

We all know your intention in posting this article here so there's no point in arguing. . . . . .

Very well then, live or die with my supposed intention. The choice is yours.

This is the problem with Nigeria and why I'm beginning to really enjoy my sojourn in Mogadishu.

Instead of readers:
1. Lamenting the spate of killings;
2. Trying to provide intelligent reasons why this is happening and how it could be stopped;
3. Attempting to proffer solutions to the problem;

The typical Nigerian will try to decipher the intention of the writer, the poster, the publisher, the newspaper, the pen, the typewriter, maybe the air around the writer or the piece of paper it was typed on. Nobody is interested in finding solutions to the problem, that is totally irrelevant to them - the mayhem and killings should just continue.

When will Nigerians start thinking of solving their problems and stop accusing the the identifier of the problem?

RichyBlacK:

This is the problem with Nigeria and why I'm beginning to really enjoy my sojourn in Mogadishu.

Instead of readers:
1. Lamenting the spate of killings;
2. Trying to provide intelligent reasons why this is happening and how it could be stopped;
3. Attempting to proffer solutions to the problem;

The typical Nigerian will try to decipher the intention of the writer, the poster, the publisher, the newspaper, the pen, the typewriter, maybe the air around the writer or the piece of paper it was typed on. Nobody is interested in finding solutions to the problem, that is totally irrelevant to them - the mayhem and killings should just continue.

When will Nigerians start thinking of solving their problems and stop accusing the the identifier of the problem?

Mo gbe!! see wisdom. I bet this pesin go tink say hin don drop no-ledge.

Mekusxyz:

The earlier you guys realize that we are in one country, the earlier you will be cured of your paranoia and misuse of the word tribalism. As citizens, we all have rights to discuss issues pertaining to any part of Nigeria. Anambra gubernatorial candidates had a political debate recently. Guess who was among the jury? Reuben Abati, a Yoruba. He was invited by Anambra people because we are of one country. Any attempt to blackmail anyone with this trite tribalism thrash will not wash, at least not with me.

Good for Anambra.

RichyBlacK:

This is the problem with Nigeria and why I'm beginning to really enjoy my sojourn in Mogadishu.

Instead of readers:
1. Lamenting the spate of killings;
2. Trying to provide intelligent reasons why this is happening and how it could be stopped;
3. Attempting to proffer solutions to the problem;

The typical Nigerian will try to decipher the intention of the writer, the poster, the publisher, the newspaper, the pen, the typewriter, maybe the air around the writer or the piece of paper it was typed on. Nobody is interested in finding solutions to the problem, that is totally irrelevant to them - the mayhem and killings should just continue.

When will Nigerians start thinking of solving their problems and stop accusing the the identifier of the problem?

Since when has Mekusxyz become interested in the well being of Yoruba people? That aside, when has any discussion on nairaland of this kind ever yielded any real solution to the situation, the only reason this thread got more than three replies is because of my first post. Anyway this thread is dead now.

Mekusxyz:

Is there any tribal bashing by the author? May be, may be not, depending on who is judging

Chei