11 arraigned for murder of former minister

Nigerian prosecutors on Monday charged 11 people before a court in the southwestern city of Ibadan for the murder of the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Bola Ige, in December last year. Ige was shot dead by gunmen who broke into his bedroom in Ibadan on 23 December. The murder was at the time linked to a political feud in his home state Osun, between the governor, Bisi Akande and his deputy, Iyiola Omisore. Among those charged were Alani Omisore, a cousin of the Osun State deputy governor, who belongs to a rival political camp from the governor and the late Ige. But the presiding judge deferred the taking of pleas by the accused to Wednesday on the grounds of a technicality. Incidents of political violence and murders have been on the rise in Africa’s most populous country of 120 million ahead of crucial general elections due next year. It will be the first vote in Nigeria since 1999 elections ended more than 15 years of military rule. Apprehension has become high because no elected government in the country’s history has ever successfully conducted a transition to another government. In the 1960s and the 1980s electoral violence provided the pretext for the military to oust civilian governments from power.