Arc. Muyiwa Ige, son of the late Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, has appealed to President Bola Tinubu to revisit his father’s murder and ensure that those responsible are made uncomfortable.
Appearing on Inside Sources with Laolu Akande on Channels Television, the younger Ige recounted the harrowing experiences of his father and the unfulfilled dreams that were violently cut short in December 2001.
He said: ‘Honestly, if I had my way, I would have thought that it would have been GCON (Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger) that he would have been given, the fact that he was assassinated while in service. The killers are still walking. Make those that did it uncomfortable. I plead with the government to relook at the case as well as other unsolved murders over the years’.
President Tinubu recently conferred a post-humuos honour of Commander of the Federal Republic on Bola Ige. It is a step below GCON.
‘My father was taken to the worst prison in Nigeria, in Makurdi. Nobody knew where he was for 63 days.
‘He wanted to run for President. He had a plan. He felt their generation had to make things right in this country. When Head of State (General) Abdusalami Abubakar said he was leaving, he saw an opportunity to reshape Nigeria.
‘Unfortunately, his colleagues decided to checkmate him because they felt that they couldn’t control him. Thereafter, he (Bola Ige) joined the (Olusegun) Obasanjo government. Then, he was assassinated on the 23 December 2001, which is a precursor to Black Christmas’.
Beyond recognition for his father, Ige’s son challenged the federal and state governments to focus on reviving the fundamentals of human capital development, which he argued have been abandoned in favour of short-term, flashy infrastructure projects.
‘And we’re not saying that that is not important’, he explained, “but I would say that they concentrate more on the optics, and the fundamentals of human capital development have been jettisoned’.
He lamented how successive administrations had failed to build upon the education legacies of leaders like Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Bola Ige, leaving critical school infrastructure to decay.
‘Because again, look, you can go around, there are lots of abandoned classrooms, some of them dating back to the Awolowo time. So now you say Awolowo time, Bola Ige time, and since Bola Ige, not one, not one additional school has been built. Not one’, he observed.
Ige’s son insisted that meaningful development requires deliberate investment in education and skills, which he argued would serve Nigeria better than mere road contracts and grandiose projects.
‘There must be deliberate action over and beyond paving roads’, he stressed. ‘Obviously awarding contracts is probably lucrative for those that want to have some form of gain, but the roads will wear. However, if you invest in young people for posterity’s sake, you will’.
He drew inspiration from the far-reaching educational policies of the past, recalling how bursaries and easy school access helped build Nigeria’s skilled workforce.
‘We’re talking about a deliberate policy initiative 46 years ago that was implemented, of which you were a beneficiary and a host of others were beneficiaries’, he said. ‘That was even secondary school. Bursary was given to those in polytechnics and university. Bursaries, there was 500 Naira, which was actually a lot more than the school fees was at the time’.
