Bola Ige: 20 years on, Cicero is still in our hearts.

BOLA IGE spoke English, Hausa, and Igbo fluently but when his Yoruba wasn’t very good, his father relocated him from Kaduna to Ibadan. That was when he started speaking Yoruba. He was also fluent in Latin subsequently.

His love for languages was so enormous that he studied Classics at the University of Ibadan. Until his ”girlfriend’ Atinuke said he would not marry anyone who is not a lawyer that Bola Ige returned to school to study law. He eventually became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Attorney General of Nigeria while his wife Atinuke became the Justice of the Court of Appeal. In Court, Atinuke was his Lord, at home, Bola was her Lord, that is why their home in Bodija Ibadan was named Solemnia Court!

Bola was assassinated exactly today in 2001 while he was serving Nigeria as Attorney General under OBJ, he was the only Attorney General assassinated in office and also without anyone held responsibly. Atinuke couldn’t live without her heartthrob, especially when she discovered where her husband’s untimely death came from, she couldn’t withstand the shock, she also left a few months after. The uncle of Bola Ige who Bola was taking care of on the sick bed also left immediately because he thought he had no reason to continue.

20 years on, Cicero is still in our hearts. We know your death was political, it was because of the 2003 elections and how SW can be captured by the then ruining party whose president lost woefully in the region in 1999. We are comforted in the fact that your son Ahmed is doing much more and the Progressive flag is still flying. Rest on Uncle till we meet to part no more, after all, we all know that paradise is solely for the Progressives!

© Ayekooto Akindele
Let the killers or masterminders live forever. One thing is certain, it’s a matter of time. Judgment day will surely come soon. The killers too will soon follow him.