By MARUFH BELLO
By the man’s nature, his foremost universal ambition irrespective of colour, race and other biases is to find for himself first, and then his loved ones, a secured peaceful living.
According to experts in security studies or securitization, human security entails and covers every facet of life of man ranging from food to housing, water, environment, education, health, freedom of expression, electoral rights, democracy, right to good living, etc. When any of these is negatively affected or not in place, man’s security is technically threatened.
Across Africa and other Western and Asian countries, movement of man from one location to the other on the terrestrial earth, over the centuries, has been noticed. Man will naturally emigrate from any troubled zone and migrate to any part of the world he feels safe.
According to media reports and statistics, in West Africa alone, more than 30,000 migrants moved from Sudan to Uganda in 2017 due to hunger, tribal and political clashes, banditry, wars, lack of accommodation, etc., leaving their “homes” to seek asylum or a permanent residence in another man’s land with the ultimate aim of a better safe living.
Another media report by Selim Meddeb Hamrouni in Maradi, Niger, published on the website of UNHCR on 26 June, 2020, has it that “more than 30,000 Nigerian refugees have arrived in Niger’s Maradi region during the past two months alone, tripling the number of who have fled there since last year.
Within the territorial area of Nigeria, kidnapping, killings, banditry, cattle rustling, farmers-herders clashes and poverty have made a lot of nationals find abode in other parts of the country, say southern part, west in particular. Notable and recent about killings in Nigeria, which tells a story of pure insecurity in the country, was the gruesome murder of Dr Abdul Fatai Aborode, a German-trained scholar, in Igangan, Mrs Sherifat Adisa, an oil tycoon and Alhaji Fatai Yusuff Oko Oloyun, an alternative and native medicine practitioner whose killers have not been fished out by the Nigerian security system till the moment. What about the abductions of the Chibok, Dapchi and Kankara students?
Edmund Obilo, a popular Nigerian broadcaster and on-the-air-personality (OAP), reported and explained in a video clip (June 9, 2020) titled “Tomorrow Will Come: Violence & Poverty in Northern Nigeria” how one Hadiza and some other frustrated citizens from northern Nigeria left their original abode and ran for their dear lives to settle in Ibadan in search of security, safety and peace.
A lot of people have been displaced from their (original) habitat in Nigeria or forced to run out of the country to Europe, America or Asia, not only because of the aforementioned reasons but bad governance, economy and currency, perennial fuel crisis, poor power distribution, insecurity, armed robbery, gangsterism, cultism, injustice, political victimisation and threats to life. Very many brilliant Nigerians have migrated to another country of the world as a fugitive, asylum seeker, permanent resident or changing their citizenship completely. Others are even ready to leave their fatherland where they are freeborn and can walk and work freely, keep their hard earned Nigerian certificates and take up a menial job, say bartender, in as much as he can access basic things of life in his new home. What’s called a home is not in most African countries, Nigeria inclusive.
No one be surprised when every Nigerian, on daily basis, struggles hard, going spiritual even, just to get out of the country. They just feel the heat is too much and have to cool off somewhere else, hence finding themselves in wrong destinations at times and risky journey on the Mediterranean Sea. Nigerians have been migrating and still migrating, not minding the risks that may be attached, to seek a peaceful living in the orderly societies.
Thinking deep and flashing back on few Nigerian personalities on why they left the country in the recent time, one remembers a number of them including but not limited to the controversial Obianuju Catherine Udeh a.k.a DJ Switch who moved to Canada aftermath of the EndSARS protest, a former AIT reporter, Ohimai Amaize, who was granted asylum in the US in June 2019 and Olayinka who ran to Europe due to threats to his life and family members, and many others whose exit was not reported in the media even during the scourge of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of a particular interest that caught the attention of this writer while in the line of his duty as a journalist is the pathetic story of an architect. Olayinka Adetunji trained as an architect and had a good career. I read about him and got a bit of information on why he left Nigeria despite he earned a good pay as an architect and somehow connected in the political circle which attracted him some patronage and privileges.
Olayinka, a researcher, had his master’s degree in Housing & Project Development Management from the University of Ibadan. Ever since qualification as a professional trained architect, he has been fortunate to work in top reputable architectural firms in Nigeria, among which was Interstate Architect Limited and later joined Hany-K International Limited where he had good salaries before the trouble, which hunts him till today, started on the 3rd of March, 2019. Olayinka had held several leadership positions where he has worked, the last of which was Principal Partner at Hany-K International Limited with €1,700 (Eight Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira) as monthly pay which was a good salary in Nigeria and enough to afford Olayinka a good life in Nigeria and stay in there if there were no threats to his life. He left Interstate Architects on 12 November, 2012.
All along, Olayinka had been fraternising with the political class in Nigeria and was and still is a member of All Progressives Congress (APC). His political affiliation and connection offered him several opportunities to get big projects and contracts. Among the portfolios of contracts he has handled before living Nigeria included being part of the design team that worked on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) branches projects in Lagos, Birnin-Kebbi, Jalingo, Uyo and Yenagoa, Nigerian Petroleum Development Corporation (NPDC), Benin City and several other building projects for corporate companies and first class politicians in Nigeria. The last project, and of course, the one that suspectedly made him become a fugitive, was the conversion of the residence of the last Premier of the defunct Western Region of Nigeria, Sir Samuel Ladoke Akintola (SLA), located at Oke-Ado/Ogbomoso, into a national monumental centre. This conversion project was awarded to Hany-K during the reign of his political party, All Progressives Congress (APC), according to the letter of offer by AAA & Co. Realtors on 22 January, 2019, who screened the tenders submitted for the project. This was, of course, the election period and change of political leadership in Nigeria. APC was in control of governance in Oyo State prior the 2019 governorship election. APC fielded Mr Bayo Addulwaheed Adelabu, a former CBN deputy governor, as its governorship candidate and unfortunately the party’s family members lost the election as Mr Seyi Mákindé’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) won the gubernatorial poll on March 9, 2019 and was subsequently sworn-in on May 29 same year.
Of course, because of the unhealthy rivalry and senseless competition between and among the political parties and politicians in Nigeria who are always posed to outsmart one another and destroy each other’s legacies, the SLA conversion project must have suffered a setback and, perhaps warranted, as a fallout, threats to the life of Olayinka Adetunji and those of his loved ones.
In March 2019, investigations confirmed that the residence of Olayinka in Ikorodu, Lagos, was visited by assailants and gunmen with the intention, according to media reports, to retrieve from him some valuables from the residence of the late Premier Akintola believed to have been in his custody as the principal partner of the company handling the project.
By the manners in which the attack on the Adetunji family was carried out, one could suspect that the failed attempt was politically motivated because that’s the ways of the politicians and oppositions in Nigeria settling scores by sniffing lives out of their perceived opponents. To corroborate this assertion is the current media report credited to Engr Seyi Makinde, the Governor of Oyo State, who said that the killing of Dr Abdul Fatai Aborode was politically motivated. Before the comment of the governor on the actual killers of Dr Aborode, the act was attributed to the Fulani herdsmen. However, even before Governor Makinde said the killing was politically motivated, there has been inconsistency in the reports of how Dr Aborode was killed. Some said he was killed on his farm or the bike taking him to the farm, others claimed he was tied to a tree in front of the palace of Sariki of Ibarapa land in Igangan, Alhaji Salihu Abdulkadir, when he went to report the damage to his farm by Fulani herdsmen and was macheted to death. To an intelligent person, he would suspect that something was not just right about the earlier claims, which later led to the eviction order to the Fulanis in Ibarapa land by Chief Sunday Adeyemo a.k.a Sunday Igboho on Friday, 22 January, 2021.
According to findings, the incident of attack on the Adetunjis was confirmed by the police after Olayinka and his family of a wife and three children escaped the onslaught with the help of the local security guards in his community where unfortunately one of the gangsters that attacked the family died in the chaotic situation that ensued afterwards. This incident was reported online by Frontpageng.com on August 15, 2019. See the link here:
The Nigerian police, till the moment, have not been able to track down the other members of the gang or their sponsors just like the killers of Chief Bola Ige, the former governor of old Oyo State and Minister of Justice & Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Mrs Kudirat Abiola, the wife of a late business mogul and the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria, Bashorun MKO Abiola, Pa Alfred Rilwane, Dr Abdul Fatai Aborode recently killed in Igangan, Ibarapa, Oyo State and several others.
The Nigerian police, in a document titled “Police Investigation Report: Case of Robbery Attack and Threat to Life,” states their incapability to track down the assailants of the Adetunji family by saying “That all efforts by the police to track the people that perpetrated this crime have proved abortive and are ongoing.”
Since the killing of one of the gangs that attacked the Olayinka Adetunji family, Olayinka himself, his wife, children and his loved ones have not known peace as they always receive messages of threat to life through calls from unknown numbers, threatening letters and notices by the gang members who, according to reports, were suspected to be cultists and political criminals.
Olayinka did not take this serious until he was again trailed to Ibadan where he first sought refuge after the Lagos incident. He was traced to Ajibode, the University of Ibadan area of Oojo, Ibadan, and received the same message that he would pay for the life of their gang member lost in Ikorodu, Lagos. At this point, he realised that these gangsters have network across Nigeria and even Africa when his wife’s mother’s uncle, Engr S. Kayode Komolafe, who offered refuge to his wife and children was killed on 10 January, 2021 and the last was the murder of his father in-law, Elder D. O. Adeleke on 4 February, 2021 which was linked to the same gang as letters of threat from the gangs were dropped at the scenes respectively. Olayinka’s father-in-law was reportedly strangled to death with a threatening message that the attack would continue.
With the horrible experiences of the attacks, on 15 August, 2019, Olayinka landed in Europe for asylum while his family members are still on the run within the African continent with serious palpable fear because they do not know what can happen in the next few hours.
The family of Olayinka Adetunji has been split due to this unfortunate incident and they have all been on the run. Relatedly, there is an unconfirmed video (made on the 15 February, 2021) of one Olupelumi Famoyegun who claimed that he has been kept in open remand in Ondo State, Nigeria, without trial for three years and has started begging Nigerians, including President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), via social media to help him secure his freedom so he can return to his family in overseas.
Why won’t people like Olayinka Adetunji be on the run when people of timber and calibre are killed in Nigeria and people are still dying of insecurity, banditry, farmers-herders clashes, armed attacks and robberies and insurgency and the Nigerian security system is so weak that no perpetrators or the sponsors of these crimes have been identified, tried nor punished? This singular reason would make any intelligent person conclude that the Nigerian political class are behind all these evils, perhaps these gangsters are being used for their political hegemonies.
When shall the political class and leadership in Nigeria begin to be truthful, transparent and patriotically dutiful to protect their citizens who, with their best brains, have continued to run away and seek refuge elsewhere around the globe?
As the Olayinka Adetunji’s ugly experience could be traced to political victimisation, so also is that of a character, Ladi, in a novel titled Kabana Republic (The Land of Hurricane) which is a socio-political satire about the Nigerian state.
There is endemic poverty and hunger in the land; no jobs; no good standard of living; there is housing deficit in Nigeria; no good functional health care system, so corruption, violence and crimes have been institutionalised. Why not our leaders create a system that engages majority of Nigerians, including all the cultists, criminals and thugs, in gainful noble tasks to reduce the crime rate in Nigeria? Why not the current political leadership allows men of good conscience and mindset to run the affairs of the nation so all of us will not turn into fugitives one day?
*Marufh Bello is a Nigerian journalist, book editor, publisher, human right & justice advocate.
