Former deputy governor arrested for minister’s murder

A former deputy governor of southwest Nigeria’s Osun State has been arrested for the murder last year of the country’s then minister of justice, police said on Friday. The inspector general of police, Tafa Balogun, told a news conference that Iyiola Omisore, who was removed from office on 13 December, would face trial for the murder of Bola Ige. “Having been removed from the immunity that surrounds his office, we had to effect his arrest,” Balogun said. Ige had been shot dead at his home in the southwestern city of Ibadan on 23 December last year just after he arrived for his Christmas vacation. Police said it was a case of political assassination. Suspicion fell on his opponents in a bitter political feud in his home state of Osun, including Omisore. Several people were arrested and charged, including a close relative of the former deputy governor. Balogun said the arrest of Omisore was an indication of the readiness of the police to deal with the rising cases of political assassination in Nigeria ahead of elections in April-May 2002. Among the unsolved cases are the 15 August killing of the chairman of the ruling People’s Democratic Party in Kwara State, central Nigeria, and the 29 August murder of a publisher and politician in Enugu State in the southeast. Others are the 1 September murder in the southeastern town of Onitsha of the local chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association and his wife, and the 24 September killing of the chairman of the newly registered United Nigeria People’s Party in the northern city of Kano.