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Funsho Adegbola, the daughter of the late Chief Bola Ige, has recounted how her father was assassinated.
Naija News reports that Ige, Nigeria’s ex-Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, was assassinated in his Ibadan home on 23 December 2001.
Speaking during an interview on the radio talk show State Affairs with Edmund Obilo, as reported by PUNCH Online on Friday, Adegbola shared some eerie premonitions and symbolic warnings she got before her father’s death.
According to her, she dreamt that she was wearing a black dress and mourning. Troubled by the dream, she confided in her father. His response was reassuring yet unsettling in hindsight: “Nobody can kill me; my life is in God’s hands.”
Adegbola recounted a peculiar incident at the palace of the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuade, just days before the assassination. During a chieftaincy ceremony for the late Chief Stella Obasanjo, Ige’s cap was mysteriously removed.
“He told me, ‘In my entire political life, nobody has ever removed my cap,’” Adegbola recalled, emphasising how deeply symbolic and unprecedented her father found the act.
Reflecting on her father’s life, Adegbola said, “As Minister of Power and Steel, he returned 16 official cars assigned to him, saying, ‘I can’t maintain more than two cars.
“His Spartan lifestyle extended to his notably basic security arrangements.
“After his assassination, Kema Chikwe visited our home and was shocked to see that our doors were ordinary carpentry wooden doors, easily breakable.
“My father had no bulletproof doors or elaborate security, unlike many public officials.”
She recalled a warning from a friend who had read a newspaper article suggesting her father might not return alive from an upcoming visit to Ife.
“I told him, ‘Daddy, it appears they will do something to you.’ He replied, ‘I am surrounded by the White Light of Christ through which nothing evil can penetrate.”
Adegbola noted that her father fasted daily, except on Sundays, and relied on his spirituality to navigate challenges.
She also linked the threats to her father’s political battles, particularly with Iyiola Omisore, then Deputy Governor of Osun State, during the era of Governor Bisi Akande’s administration. “There were political uprisings in Osun State then, and tensions were high,” she said.
The inability to obtain justice for Ige’s murder remains a devastating wound for the family. Adegbola lamented how her mother, a Justice of the Court of Appeal, was unable to secure justice for her husband. “It was a cruel irony that broke her spirit,” she added.
