"Nigeria is not worth dying for. I'm going to live for my children, My grand children & great grand children" - Funso Adegbola, Late Bola Ige’s daughter

The late Chief Bola Ige, a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation would have been 86 years old on September 13, 2016.


Following the restoration of democracy in 1999, Ige sought the nomination of the Alliance for Democracy party as a presidential candidate, but he did not succeed. President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him as Minister of Mines and Power and later Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation. On December 23, 2001, the minister was shot dead at his home in Ibadan by unknown men.

In an interview with OLUFEMI ATOYEBI of The Punch, Mrs. Funso Adegbola, Bola Ige’s daughter speaks on the life of her father with hope that the revisit of the murder case promised by the present government would do justice to his memory.

Read excerpts below:

How she learned of his murder

I was the first person to arrive in the house when he was assassinated. It happened on Sunday, December 23, 2001, a day after my birthday. On the day of my birthday, my father called me on the telephone and prayed for me for 20 minutes. He said he was proud of me and told me that he was going to see his elder brother, George, who was ill in Lagos.

He promised that he would attend Christmas carol of the church where I worship when he returned to Ibadan same day. The plan was that on December 24, he would travel to Esa-Oke for Christmas and that I would help him to organise food for his guests. At mid-day, I went to his house in Bodija but he had yet to arrive from Lagos. In the evening, I went to the house again on my way to the Christmas Carol but he was still not back. I told my mother that if he returned, both of them should come to the church. Then I left for the church, expecting them but they did not come.

On my way back from the church, I visited the house again because I also live in Bodija area. I saw his two drivers outside the gate and one of them was trying to play with my daughter but she did not want any of it. On my way upstairs, I noticed an eerie silence. I also noticed that the key to my mother’s room was outside the door so I thought they were in the library. But my son called my mother and she answered from her room. He unlocked the key and we met my mother, my brother (Muyiwa) and his wife in the room.

My brother then said that he thought they had shot our father. He rushed to his room while I followed; there we met him on the floor with a big gunshot hole in his heart. Muyiwa could not believe he was dead, so he blocked the hole with his hand and attempted to revive him. Then he took the body to his car, believing that he was still alive. I was crying while my brother took the body to the hospital. When I came out, he had sped off.

The University College Hospital staff were on strike so my father’s body was taken to Oluyoro Hospital. Earlier in the day, my father had taken his brother from Lagos to the same hospital and was admitted to one of the wards. So the nurses were surprised to see the body of someone they had earlier seen in the day and who had given them cash gift for Christmas.

They took the body to the theatre for surgery but he was dead. My husband later told me that he was brought in dead. I called my uncle, Dele and told him what had happened. When he got to the hospital, he met his sick elder brother (George) and both cried over my father’s death. Uncle Dele later collapsed and had to be revived at the hospital.

On how their mother took it

At that point, there was no way we could hide the death from my mother, we had to tell her that her husband had died. She broke down.

When we got home, my husband was trying to talk to the people who were with my father. One of them said they had gone up and saw my father dead but when I came in, nobody said anything about him being dead to me. In fact, one of them, as I said, tried to play with my daughter. Only one of them looked disheveled and subdued. They said they had gone to eat but Muyiwa said it was impossible for our father to ask them to go and eat outside at the time of the night when there was food in the house and there was a cook to prepare it.

Obviously, it was either they were there when the killers came, or the killers told them to take a walk while they killed him. Only God knows what happened that day. What is obvious is that someone led Muyiwa’s wife to my mother’s room at gun point and locked them all there. Then someone else was with my father to carry out the killing. My mother was praying while all these were going on and she was certain that at the end of the operation, something terrible had happened. Whoever killed my father knew what they were doing.

On premonitions

Funny enough, I was the one that had premonition of his death. On December 18, 2001, my mother was honoured with the Order of the Federal Republic by President Obasanjo. On the 15th of the same month, my father’s cap was removed in Ooni’s palace. Two days after, a report was published where those who removed the cap said that would be my father’s last visit to the palace.

On the night between December 21 and 22, 2001, I had a terrible dream that I was wearing black cloth and crying. When I told my father that he or my brother could be killed, he discarded the thought. I had earlier lost my immediate younger brother in 1993 so I could not bear the loss of another family member.

My father said that nobody could kill him and I replied that Nigeria was not worth dying for. Then he said anything worth living for was worth dying for. When he was killed, I remembered that a day earlier, I had warned him of a tragedy in the family. December 15 was special in my life; it was the day his cap was removed in Ife and also the birthday of my daughter.

My mother died 16 months after my father died because she too was heartbroken. She died a day after the star witness changed his witness. My mother died the following morning. In fact, we’ve been through a lot, so that is why I still tell my children that Nigeria is not worth dying for.






We would love to hear your opinion on this post in the comment section BELOW. And do share this post on your favourite social networking sites.