You were very close to your dad. How has it been since his demise' I was very close to my dad. I am the first child and the only girl, so, I was extremely close to my dad. It has not been easy in the past 10 years but we thank God for His grace and comfort. We also thank God for having a very supportive family. My father had very true and loyal friends, they have been with us since my father's passing and my mother's passing as well.He was like the rallying point for the extended family as well. How has it been with the larger family since his departure' Well, we are all trying. He was a very good uncle to my cousins and a good brother to his siblings. So, I guess all of us have missed him a lot in the past 10 years.What particularly do you miss about him'My father was a very loving father. I used to speak with him every single day. He would always tell me 'Funso, I love you. Don't ever forget that.' He was a very loving father and a very doting grandfather. He loved my children so much. He was a very committed person. Though he was a public figure, he was a very private person. He believed that it was important to be good at home before being good outside. He was good at home to us; my mum, the children and the grandchildren as well as those in his professional and political life.What do you consider the most important thing that he did for you'I think the most important thing he did for me was to give me a legacy, a good name. Everywhere I go, when people know that I am his daughter, they warm up to me. He gave me a fantastic education. He gave us core values; love, integrity, character. He gave us self confidence so that when he passed on we could all stand and be on our own.He created an atmosphere of love around us such that we knew that someone loved us and cared for us. I am happy that I don't have any regrets. We had a fantastic relationship. I don't feel that I wish I had been closer to my dad. I don't have the feeling that I wish I had expressed myself to him, how much I loved him. That for me is very comforting because my father really gave everything that he had in terms of love.Being very close to him, did he have any inkling that some people were after him'No. In fact I was the one that had an inkling that something bad was going to happen. I remember when I shared my fears with him, I said, 'Daddy, these people are very dastardly, I think they are going to do something bad to you. They may even kill you.' He said, 'Lai lai (Never), God has not given my life to anybody. Nobody can take my life.' I told him to be careful that Nigeria was not worth dying for but he told me that anything worth living for was worth dying for. I told him that I could not die for Nigeria but he told me not to worry that no bad thing would happen to him.I have a niece, the daughter of my late brother who died at the age of 30. Longevity runs in my father's line and he told me that he would not die before turning 84 and that by that age, my niece would have gotten married and he would now say to God, 'Now let your servant depart in peace.' So, my father did not know that he was going to die that day. He actually wanted to see my niece, Tamilore, get married.He actually wanted to be at Tamilore's wedding because he felt that was going to be the culmination of his life.Given the premonition that you had, when it actually happened did you have the feeling that may be you could have done something to protect him' I feel that they were out to kill him anyway. I guess there was nothing I could have done beyond that which I did. I am happy that I expressed those fears to him at about 21st of December. My mother was made OFR (Officer of the Federal Republic) on the 18th of December, so we were in Abuja. On the 19th or 20th, I saw a newspaper report where they said that would be Bola Ige's last outing and I was really scared. I told him on the 21st, 22nd was my birthday. I sent food to him on my birthday and I later saw him. On my birthday, I would always write letters to my parents to thank them for giving birth to me and taking care of me. On the morning of 23rd, he was going to Lagos to pick his elder brother who had been ill and before going to Lagos, he prayed for me for about 40 minutes on the telephone. I did not know that was the last time he was going to pray for me. I went to his house three times on that day just to see him.My children and I were the first set of people to get to the house that day after he was killed.You just went to the house that evening as you normally did'Yes, I just went there. Because he was travelling to Esa Oke on the 24th and I would not be there until 25th, my children had bought Christmas present and we had gone to give my mum hers and we wanted to give my dad his personally. That day was my church's carol service and my dad had hinted that he might be coming for the carol service on his way from Lagos. I went to the house about midday and my mum told me that my dad had gone to Lagos with Muyiwa (the younger brother). I went back around four in the afternoon to see whether my dad had returned from Lagos so he could come to our carol service. He still had not come back. So, I went to the carol service. I thought I would see him at the carol service but I did not see him. So, shortly after my return home from the carol service, we decided to visit him in the house. I found all his security details in the house. I asked if he was in the house and I was told he was inside so I went in.They did not know that he had been killed'They knew but I guess they did not just want to tell me. I went upstairs; my mum, my brother and the rest of the family were locked up in my mother's room. My children were shouting 'grandma', then my mother told me that she had been locked up in her room. We opened the door and Muyiwa said, 'Daddy' because he had heard gunshots. So, Muyiwa rushed to Daddy's room and I followed him. We found his body on the floor.You keep talking about 'they.' Who are the 'they''The people know themselves. The people who killed my father are not from Mars, they are Nigerians, they know themselves and they will not have any peace. They cannot shed the blood of an innocent man and get away with it.Though we may not get earthly justice, we will definitely get divine justice. They can run but they cannot hide. Not only the people who pulled the trigger but also the people who sent them and the people who sent the people who sent them, all of them are going to face God's judgment.Ten years after, nobody has been convicted for the murder...I think that is the saddest thing because at that time the people in power said a lot of things; they were going to rout them out, they would deal with them etc. But really, they knew they were not going to do anything, they just set us on an emotional roller coaster; raising and dashing our hopes. For me, that is a pity for Nigeria because if the chief law officer, a sitting attorney general of the federation, could just be killed like that and nothing was done, I think it sends a wrong signal to the people who do things like that to think that they can kill anybody and just get away with it.Also, it is a very big stain for Nigeria in the international community because when my father was killed, it was actually on CNN and that is a very bad sign for foreigners, if they are thinking of coming here to invest. When there is no security of life, when the lives of state officials cannot even be protected. I think it is very sad and for all the people that have been killed since then, nobody has been punished. So, people think they can get away with murder and that is very sad.The trial of some of the arrested people initially raised hope that of the court actually punishing some people for the murder but the trend changed after one of the witnesses, one of Chief Ige's domestic staff recanted...Well, he was coerced and intimidated to change his testimony. He was the star witness, that was the security guard. The chief suspect intimidated him when they were put together in a prison cell. I don't know how they happened to put them together and he intimidated the poor guy and so the next day, the star witness recanted everything that he had said.That day, April 9th, he recanted and on April 10th, my mother died. So, I still hold the Nigerian government responsible for the death of my father and my mother. If my father had not died when he did, my mother would not have died when she died. That day (April 9th), she said, 'Se won wa fe pa Bola gbe ni'' (Will they get away with killing Bola') Looking at the trend, she knew that they were not going to do justice in the case. She was a Court of Appeal justice herself. Other people had gotten justice in her own court and she saw the handwriting on the wall and she realised that it was an exercise in futility. I told her, 'Mummy, don't worry, go to bed.' We did not even want her to listen to the news that day, but somebody called her and said 'Tinuke, I am sorry about the whole thing.' She said, 'sorry about what'' So, she put on the television and heard the report of the court proceeding herself.There was nothing wrong with her on the 9th, but after hearing the report, she died the following morning.What lesson do you think Nigerians can learn from the life and death of Chief Bola Ige'On Tuesday, December 14, this year, The Vale College commissioned the stage adaptation of the Kaduna Boy (an autobiography of Chief Bola Ige) and we made it free for all secondary schools in Oyo State, both public and private. At the end of it, there were about 1,000 students at the Cultural Centre. The students spoke glowingly about my dad.One of them said he was inspired by the life of my father. He said my father was the kind of people they want; good people, people with character. For me, those kids' tributes are the most important thing because they did not know my dad, so they were not biased. The oldest of them would have been 17 years, which means by the time my father was killed he would only have been seven years.I remember my niece once asked me, 'Aunty, when you and my father were in school, were you going to school in a limousine'' I said 'No. My father had a Peugeot 504 and a Mercedes.' She said, 'I thought your father was a governor'' I said, 'Not the kind of governors that we have these days.'My father was not a rich man in terms of material wealth. His life was a life of service to Nigeria, not a life of greed or corruption. These are the lessons that politicians can learn but I don't think they really can learn that anymore because these days, everything is so monetised that is why people are ready to kill. When my father was a governor, I am sure he did not even earn as much as a local government councillor is earning now. Politics now allows people to make the kind of money they cannot make from an honest day's work. That is why they won't think twice about killing somebody to get there because they cannot make that kind of money in their entire life.Until we make public service, real service we cannot get anywhere. A member of the National Assembly earns more than President Obama. That does not make sense and this is a country where about 80 per cent of the people live below the poverty line. The more politics is about money, about what people can get; car allowances, furniture allowances etc, the more people are going to kill, maim and destroy because they are like their father, the devil because there is no way on earth that they can make that kind of money honestly. That is why this kind of things happens because people that do not have any pedigree, people that have never run any viable company are now handling billions and trillions. I really do not know if they can learn anything from the life of my father.My father, in the whole of Ibadan, only had two houses; he was living in one and move to the other when it was built. He also had one office in Adamasingba. That is inconceivable to these modern politicians. That was somebody who was governor of the equivalent of Oyo and Osun states. There are a few people who can be like that, people who are Spartans. And if you look at all the governors in my father's generation, they were like that. But as soon as it became money politics, it became do or die.What I think is that if we lose it with the politicians, we can get children in primary, secondary and the university to begin to think beyond themselves. But it is going to take a lot of work because they look at those who are people of integrity and they are not the ones with all the money. People who have all the money are the politicians. Until they make public office a place where you just get sitting allowance, things are not likely going to change. There are people who go to the House and for four years made no contribution and they are collecting astronomical amount of money. My father when he was a commissioner in 1972 could resign because he had a thriving law practice. When he was governor, he had people running his chambers so that when he was rigged out of office in 1983, he just went back to his chambers. A lot of these people what do they have to go back to' That is why once they get to Abuja, they never want to come back. They now use that to lobby. I feel very sad about how things have turned in Nigeria.There are some people that believe that Chief Ige might not have been killed had he not agreed to serve in a PDP-led government....Let me make one clarification, my father was never a member of the PDP. As of the time he was asked to be minister, he spoke to his constituency, he spoke to his political party, which was AD (Alliance for Democracy), at that time, he spoke to my mum and us the children. We expressed our reservations and he told us that it was an opportunity for him to change the lives of his people. He was asked to choose between the Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Power and he chose Power because he believed that was the ministry where he would have the most impact. He had a power creed that he had written out, he had the goal that NEPA would function well and he tried his best to change NEPA but he was being sabotaged. After that he was Justice Minister and he did his best before he was taken out.If they brought him in to kill him, well, God is on the throne. I can only speak of my father's point of view but I cannot speak of others. He agreed to join the government because of his love for Nigeria, because he wanted to contribute more to the development of the country.He wrote his letter of resignation on December 19th, he said he was resigning to organise his party, the AD, in preparation for the 2003 elections. In his column, Uncle Bola's Column, he was always talking about organise, organise, organise.He joined the government because he believed Nigeria could be better. He believed that if we could have regular supply of electricity, it would help the economy because the companies would be spending less on power generation and overhead and they would be able to create more job opportunities for the nation's teeming youths. But it is sad that 10 years later, the situation of power generation is even worse than when my father was there.Are you hopeful that justice could still be done in his case'Really in criminal law, there is no time limit to when justice can be gotten. It can happen in 10 years, it can happen in 20 years.Where there is a will, there is a way. If they desire to reopen the case at anytime, it will not be too late.
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