Bayo Ohu

When Bayo Ohu answered the knock on his door while he was preparing to go to church that fateful Sunday morning of 20 September 2009, little did he know that it was assassins coming for his soul. As he opened the door, the armed assailants wasted no time in shooting Ohu, in front of his two children. He died later in hospital.

Aged 45 at the time of his death, Ohu was assistant news editor of The Guardian, an independent Lagos daily. According to the Nigerian Union of Journalists, the murder was a hit: Ohu was targeted, they said, for his political reporting. They believe the murder is related to a media investigation he was working on into alleged fraud in the Nigeria Customs Service and his reporting of the Ekiti State elections, which had been marred by anti-media violence.

His wife, Blessing, confirmed his death was linked to an alleged fraudulent certificate issued by a recently appointed customs official, information she acquired from The Guardian.

Blessing spoke of the nonchalant attitude of the Nigerian police towards her late husband’s death: ‘One policeman came to ask me about a particular cell phone and if it belonged to my husband. I looked at the phone and told him it was not my husband’s and he left. Then, after three days, another set of policemen came, sent by the inspector general [the police chief] to console us. That is all I have had from the police.’

Blessing is convinced the police did not do enough to find her husband’s killer. Yinka Odumakin, spokesman for socio-cultural organization for the Yoruba people, Afenifere, was also curious about why the assailants took away Ohu’s laptop. Odumakin said the police ought to interrogate the then Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Abdullahi Dikko, over Ohu’s murder – especially given his press stories about Dikko, and because there have been previous accusations of misconduct against Dikko. According to Ayodele Samuel, a Nigerian activist, an individual called Olajide Ibrahim swore an oath through his lawyer, Festus Keyamo, that he had forged certificates for Dikko in 1995.

Although three men were later accused of the murder, like many similar killings in Nigeria Ohu’s assassination has remained unresolved, and none of the authorities seems to be concerned, regardless of how the family of the slain journalist feels. A UNESCO publication reports that, like Bayo Ohu, journalists Godwin Agbroko, Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, Zakariya Isa, Nansok Sallah, Enenche Akogwu and Ikechukwu Udendu, were all killed, and yet the status of the investigations into their deaths was not available because Nigeria had not acknowledged or responded to UNESCO’s official request to provide information.

In Nigeria, as elsewhere, leaving such killings uninvestigated only emboldens other criminal syndicates, often allegedly headed by high-ranking state elites, in their activities. As long as the government and the police turn a blind eye, there are bound to be many more like Bayo Ohu who will be snatched from their loved ones for daring to challenge the power of organized syndicates. Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, upon leaving office in 2007, had alleged that the killers of former Attorney-General of Nigeria Chief Bola Ige, murdered in 2001, were drug barons he was about to expose. And, more recently, the intimidatory power wielded by Nigeria’s criminal networks has seen a highly performing governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode, drop his bid for a second term after former governor Bola Tinubu, who enjoys the patronage of political thugs in Lagos, bullied him out of the race.

Bayo Ohu was laid to rest on 25 September 2009 in his home town, Iseyin, Oyo State. Yet justice has not been concluded in the same way. A former police officer, Ogbonna Onovo, confirmed that the police claimed his murder was a simple case of armed robbery on the basis of possessions that had been taken at the time of the murder. Two phones were later recovered; however, his wife confirmed they were not his. Many suspect that Ohu was targeted because of his line of work.