Ige: There Can't be Justice - Soyinka By Eddy Odivwri Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday doubted the possibility of getting justice in the on-going trial of 11 suspects charged with the murder of late Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige. Soyinka in an interview with THISDAY yesterday in Lagos said that the fears he earlier expressed that the actual killers of Ige may never be found is gradually becoming a self-fulfill prophecy, adding that the several retractions and reversals being made by key witnesses in the case go to confirm his fears. "The fears I had at the very beginning were that those who killed Bola Ige knew what they were doing. They knew where they steered the people... I had made a statement at the beginning that what we have (in this investigation) is a snake and that the very head of the snake will not be scourged. "I said it that everything had been carefully planned right from the conception of the conspiracy to the execution," he added. Soyinka explained that all the events starting from the riot in the Osun State House of Assembly to the removal of Ige's cap at the palace of Ooni of Ife, and the eventual murder had been premidated by the "high profile" conspirators. "None of them (incidents) was fortuitous, none was an accident", Soyinka said. He expressed worry that police in their investigation did not make use of sophisticated application of forensic technology to find Ige's murderers. Soyinka who compared Ige's murder to that of a former American President, John F. Kennedy, lamented that the investigations have fallen short of a firm lead into fiinding the killers because of the entry of amateurs into the game. He said such a high-profile murder should have enlisted the best of hands across the world but regretted that "the moment amateurs got into the game and thought they could set loose a grand conspiracy...", the investigation derailed. He said those behind the murder are very cunning planners who understand how to excite the anxieties of the public and also know how to manipulate the system to achieve their own ends. He lamented that the way the trial is going, the confidence of the ordinary man in the justice system in the country will be highly impaired. "The impact of this kind of development in the sense of confidence of the ordinary citizen is very negative," he said. Since hearings in the murder case began at an Ibadan High Court, three prosecution witnesses had retracted their initial statements to the police. A prosecution witness, Mr Andrew Olofu who was the security man on duty when Ige was murdered in his Ibadan residence December 23, 2001, had on April 9, declared that he could no longer recognize nor identify the killers. According to him, he was held at gun point and led into the house , and so could not look at the faces of the assailants. However, January last year Olofu had helped in identifying some of the accused in an identification parade of arrested suspects. One of those he identified is Alani, cousin to former deputy governor of Osun State, Otunba Iyiola Omisore, Justice Atinuke Ige, the widow of the murdered Attorney General died the following day-April 10 in what was believed to be a result of the shock from Olofu's retractions. Another retraction was the denial of the prime suspect, Mr Gbenga Adebayo, alias Fryo, who said that he was tutored to implicate Otunba Omisore in the case, stressing that neither he nor Omisore had anything to do with Ige's murder. Again, this contradicts his earlier statement to the effect that Omisore had organized meetings where the plot to kill Ige was discussed. Fryo had surrendered himself to a Lagos lawyer, Mr Festus Keyamo, and in a sworn affidavit stated that he was privy to the plots to kill Ige. He had then given graphic details of how the plot was hatched and executed. He said he was offered a million naira to kill Ige but he turned it down on the excuse that the money was too small. Before Fryo's retraction, one other prosecution witness also alleged that the police tortured him to implicate Omisore. Soyinka who spoke on a number of national issues the details of which will be published on Saturday also complained about the outcome of the National Assembly elections in Osun state in which detained Omisore was said to have won the senatorial contest in Osun-east senatorial district. Soyinka said he was rudely shocked to learn that Omisore won "even in Bola Ige's household," stressing that "it is unheard of any where in the world that a man accused of murder in a household comes around to win elections in the household of the murdered." "I don't know what part of the world that impossibility can be contemplated," he added. He noted that what the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did in declaring Omisore winner in Ige's country home, Esa Oke, amounted to stamping the allegations of rigging and electoral manipulations that characterized the just concluded polls.