It is thirteen(13) whole years now that Chief James Ajibola Ige (a.k.a. Uncle Bola and Cicero of Esa-Oke), was murdered in cold-blood by the wicked souls in his bedroom in Ibadan, Oyo State capital. I remember with sadness and total sense of a great loss like any other person with blood of humanity running in his veins. Whenever I recollect the memory of that Black Sunday – 23rd December, 2010, my heart bleeds, my ears aches and I always have feelings of sobriety and natural jittery! The reality of existence becomes glaring and feasible. The rhetoric questions always bug my mind till date: Why Uncle Bola? Why Cicero of Esa-Oke? What has he done? Who has he offended? Who dunnit? All these remain unanswered questions keeping on piercing through our national psyche and mind like a seafaring man in the desert of waters.
it is rather unfortunate and a national disgrace that a man of Uncle Bola’s caliber was so gruesomely murdered and nothing happened till date.It shows that nobody is safe.Thank God, if you go out in the morning and comes back safely at night.Even at that,inside your own house,there is no guarantee of a safe night sleep,because at any time of the night, you sleep with total anxiety of the possible visit by unwanted elements who can easily knock at your door at night to ask from you what they didn’t give you at noon.Can you imagine a serving Attorney-General and Minister for Justice,being shot dead,even inside his house and worse still, in the full glare of his family and other households?
I knew since then that we have lost a political icon, a genius, a lawyer per excellence, a philosopher-ruler, an orator and a great nationalist.Nigeria has never remain the same again! Uncle Bola’s death made me to believe that life is truly a journey and as the Holy Book says, “Vanity upon vanity, all is vanity.” With your permission, I will now quote in extenso, the Russian novelist, Vladimir Maximov, in his book: “Farewell From Nowhere” thus: “This earth is probably just a station in our life where we only take up a place that we change for somewhere else.We still have to fly on and on until we reach our destination unknown to us.Each stopping-place for us is a new life in a new guise.Here, for instance, you are a human being,but on another planet you may be a plant,an animal or a stone.It is just a matter of luck on individual. Our death is simply a farewell to one of many stopping-places; no more than that. A farewell from nowhere, so to speak. It’s just a pity that this time around, you have been allotted such an uncomfortable waiting-room. Let’s hope we have better luck next time.But the most important of all is that at every stopping-place you must strive to assert yourself to leave indelible footprints on the sands of time.Seize every opportunity at your disposal to attain your ambitions and you feel always to come back to attain better achievements, if not here, then at any other stopping-places. or what do you think?” What else do we have to add to this great words of philosophy of life?
Uncle Bola – the Cicero of Esa-Oke, a man of forensic mind, brilliance laced in meticulous details,prophetic in utterances and committed to principles – be they of personal or political tendencies.Hear the legend: “I believe that we all have a purpose for our creation in this world, an infinitesimal role that we have to play: some people discover their role.Some people don’t.Many failed to discover their life purpose out of sheer ignorance.” That is Cicero for you! He was such a pillar of knowledge, compact,bronzed,a well-tempered steel coiled into spring.Agile,brainy,imaginative,creative, a political thinker, an intellectual colossus tied to the end of a well-preserved physique.There you get two Uncle Bola in one! A man of most unimpeachable probity and fidelity….say it as it is, Uncle Bola fear no foe! He tells you the most unpleasant truth to your face.Damn you cowards!
Like his mentor – the immortal sage of our time – the great Obafemi Awolowo of blessed memory, said: “Grant an enlightened and dynamic leadership, the wealth of a nation is the fountain of its strength.” With the death of Chief Ige,Nigeria did lost the benefits of another enlightened and fearless analyst and social commentator – a resourceful leader of deepest dye.Hear Uncle Bola again:”If I am wrong in my submissions, remarks and utterances,I don’t want to be neutral.My ideas may be wrong in your perception today because truth is bitter,but definitely sometimes and somewhere in the near future,my worth shall be revealed and acclaimed as being indispensable and ultimately useful.I don’t fear to be corrected since am not a saint.”
Uncle Bola, your death was politically motivated – the political marauders who master-minded your death are now licking their own political sores, for it is now beyond ordinary wounds! Your ‘captured’ political territories, especially, the South Western part of Nigeria, are already being reclaimed by your political associates and acolytes. Nevertheless, Lagos State remains the cornerstone of Nigeria’s modern ‘scientific’ democracy – no doubt about that.We should give kudos to Chief Bisi Akande, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Your political adversaries had forgotten that Yoruba proverb: “Iyan ogun odun a ma joni l’owo” (the yam mold of yester-years scalds still the dipper’s hands). A new political party of your dream, which your generation laboured and longed for has finally seen the light of the day – All Progressive Congress(APC). Nigeria and Nigerians now have a more credible alternative political option. Nigerians are tired of ineptitude, clueless and government without vision! The wind of a New Nigeria is blowing. enemies of Change are now jittery! They cannot sleep again!!
However, after these long fights, the time has come for our progressive political armour to be toughened, our tanks should be fastened and with the undying spirit of a political gladiator like you, still charging – leading the march to our political Eldorado in Nigeria as a whole. I am as sure as eggs is egg, that we will smash the people’s enemies on their own territory and pursue them out of power in Nigeria. Already the political revolution has started and burning like a wildfire, even on the enemy’s home front. It is a political spiritual message that is coming to pass. This time around, Yorubaland shall be free and Nigeria shall be free again and again. Let’s clear our territory first before we ascend and march on like political soldiers that we are.The progressive march has begun and no going back! And with tact, openness to good advice, political determination, discipline and focus, no mountain is un-scalable.
Uncle Bola, though you died and fell as a victim in the fateful political struggle to liberate Nigeria from the jackboots of political sophists, splutters, spoilers and quislings; but be rest assured that the political struggle worth dying for and it still continues unabated. The ‘come and chop’ politicians, the then captors are now the captives! The ‘garrison commander’ of the political ‘tsunami’ are now victims of their own designs. While nature has consumed the arrowhead of ‘amala politics’ in the South West, their chief noise-maker ended up in Kirikiri prison, the day his mob followers accompanied him to the court, all fully-dressed in their aso ebi, dancing to the beatings of their drums of conspiracy! Their center can no longer hold. Now they are jittery. The hunter is now being hunted! This I strongly believe that the spirits of our progressives forebears shall not fail us forever. Your good friend – Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo is now a changed man – he is now in the forefront of the Change That We Need in Nigeria! He is more of an elder statesman than a ‘kurukere’ politician.
And so, thirteen solid years gone by since the cock crew at the back of the great man! But still, you, Uncle Bola, was truly a great man, a leader and fisher of men, a builder and molder of intellectual minds, a super public analyst and commentator of highest order. I can say of you Chief Bola Ige, that you were great in intellect, in courage, in affection, and in integrity. Great not as a hewn obelisk, but as an alpine mountain! You were the Iroko tree of our political forest.You were a rare mutant with traces of humanity, one of the most charistmatic leaders, a dynamo of enthusiasm, who speaks in italics and anecdotes, gestures exubrantly and leans into his audience; whether of one or million. I can vow for your intellectual vigour and perennial integrity. Now, I ask: Where else can one expect to find a fluid interflow of political values and ideas? I fear for my nation as the numbers of our political enigmas diminishes every now and then, without possible replacements.
Look – there it is! Uncle Bola – the man at whose very name, it seems, all political chameleons, cowards and betrayers freeze in fearful veneration and nature itself stood tamed, silently confessing that, truly had once lived here, had walked along this bank, had breathed this air, had served out his ‘term of exile’ like any mortal; but has outstandingly conquered the world by immortalizing himself with unparalleled legacy of truth and political liberty for his people. Truth is faithfulness to the facts of life,nature and history.But strangest of all is that in the face of such an outrage as your murder, an unheard-of sacrilege – conspired and perpetrated by die-hard heartless beasts, the political whimpey mongrels and sons-of-a-bitch,elements with contrite hearts – even the grass had not withered, the sun had not hidden its face and life had not vanished from this sinful earth! Your good memory makes me to remember the sharp pen of Dele Giwa(1947 – 1986), who was also murdered by unknown heartless men. He had written, thus: “Every evil done by man to man shall certainly be redressed,if not now,then later,if not by man,then certainly by God.” Surely, the Law of Karma will still take its course. And so, the more I remember you, the more your memory takes me to the immortal mind of John Donne: “…And man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never set to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” For I can say without being immodesty, that Chief Bola Ige was a good ambassador of humanity and an epitome of mankind with humane face.
I remember Joe Igbokwe who wrote this comments about Uncle Bola’s tragic death, “If anybody had told me that Nigeria will murder our much loved and most valued and cherished Chief Bola Ige at peace times in Nigeria I would not have believed it. If anybody had told me that Chief Bola Ige would be treated this way by Nigeria he fought so much to liberate from the shackles of military dictatorship I would not have believed it” Can you see how painful it was?
And before I go,I will like to commend to you, this memorable words of wisdom by Stephen Grellet, thus: “I shall pass through this world but once.If therefore,there be any kindness I can show or good thing I can do, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” Yes, you did not pass through life like an ordinary mortal, but rather you passed like a colossus, and left behind your good deeds that has already immortalized you forever.And to those who conspired to kill Uncle Bola, I wish you can remember what Williams Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth: Act III, Scene 2 : “Nought’s had,all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content: ‘T is safer to be that which we destroy,Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” (Meaning: “Nothing gained, everything is lost, When what we have wished for is got without bringing happiness. It is better to let what we destroyed live,Than let the destruction live with us in doubtful joy.”) . But I pray that God will sooner than later, demystify the aura of invincibility and supernatural power(if they have any) surrounding your killers , and their conspirators.
In concluding my write-up in honour of Uncle Bola, I will like to dwell a bit through his then politically sagacious: “Uncle Bola’s Column” in Sunday Tribune, where he once wrote: “Aquila non capit muscas.”(Latin), (meaning,”The eagle does not catch flies.” ) His life was great and controversial, for he speaks out not only the plain truth but also the unpleasant truth, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to the world, ‘this was a man.’ A man who has done more than enough.The thinking mind will see that here is the work, not only of a man, of a great man, but of a God-in-embryo! It was that Japanese poet – After Basho(1643 – 1694) who wrote and I quote: “You only live twice;once when you are born; and once hen you look death in the face.” You can see it all! As a great and a learned man that Uncle Bola was, he had conscience, and he didn’t just keep his mouth shut in the face of wrongs and tyranny – he stood up for the truth and challenged falsehood, and at the end of the day, he risked his life, in order for this society to be so liberated. Therefore, it is true, the wise saying that, “The society will only get better when its elders are ready to plant trees that they know that nature will not let them stay enough to sit under its shade!”
Whither the spirits of our heroes past! Whither the spirit of Oduduwa – the great Yoruba progenitor!! Where were you when your industrious and illustrious son – James Ajibola Ige was taken away?
O, Uncle Bola! –
Asiwaju of Esa-Oke!
Jagun of Ijesa Land!
Odofinoluwa of Ila-Orangun!
Cicero of Esa-Oke!
The exponent of the “siddon look” politics.
May a flight of sweet angels sing you to your eternal rest and may your soul rest in perfect peace.
Adieu, our dear Uncle Bola!
I will now ask: There gone Uncle Bola, when comes another???
