ICHEOKU says it was with mixed feelings but definitely not shocked, that ICHEOKU received the news of the assassination of a former Defense Chief of Nigeria, AVM Alex Badeh. It is unfortunate that he was murdered and now has become part of the statistics of victims of the general insecurity in the land.
This was a guy who diverted billions of Naira meant to arm and equip the Nigerian Air-Force into his personal use accounts; and was being prosecuted for the grand larceny and theft of the Nation's commonwealth. Ironically, his billions could not save him from the assassins hot leads and he cannot take any dime with him as he flies away into eternity.
The story of such unmitigated corruption is replete throughout the society, including in other branches of the military as well as other security agencies, including the police; and somebody is still wondering why the intolerable high level of insecurity in the land which has literary defied solution. Yet despite all these, some people still wants to vote for the face of this wanton corruption in Nigeria, Abubakar Atiku, into office as their president. ICHEOKU says may God forbid bad thing, IJN.
However, the only good thing out of this tragedy is that it shows that nobody is immune from the insecurity in the land; and that even the high-up also falls victim to the incessant blood letting in Nigeria. A situation which they often don't pay much attention to and at best, a lip service attention, because of the security cordon usually thrown around them, including battery of government paid guards who protect them. But none of it paid off today, as he assumed room temperature and instead of returning home to his palatial mansion which corruption purchased for him, he is in a frozen drawer inside a morgue, awaiting the pathologist's scalpel.
As a high up military honcho, Badeh possibly too, knew and/or had an inkling about what happened to Bola Ige, but kept quiet about it; thinking that he was just a bloody civilian Attorney General and Minister of Justice and that a non bloody and nor civilian military honcho is totally shielded from such a dastardly assassination. Imagine the possibility that Bade could still be alive today had Bola Ige's assassins been caught, prosecuted and convicted and are either serving life prison sentences or received death penalty sentences that have already been carried out. It would have surely served as a deterrent to those assassins, who today, took Bade's life. But no, it was Bola Ige's turn yesterday and today, it was is Alexander Badeh and who knows for whom the bell will toll tomorrow.
So, it is somewhat comforting to see that every life can succumb to insecurity and therefore every life should matter and should be protected, by solving the insecurity problem in the country. Therefore, if Alex Badeh's assassination will jolt every leader or everyone in authority in Nigeria, to work harder, going forward; to ensure that there is security for everybody, so be it. An insecurity for one should as a matter of course be an insecurity for all. The life of an Agatu farmer in remote Benue State should not be of any lesser value than a former military honcho Bade's life in Abuja, simply because Bade is a proverbial Nigerian "big man." Former IGP Ogbonna Onovo once issued a report which showed that more than half of Nigerian Police Force are deployed to protecting about only 10% of the population's high up, with the other half protecting the rest of other 90% of the lower caste Nigerians, whose lives are less important and of lower value. Speaking of a country or rather a country, that once was.
Therefore ICHEOKU welcomes the periodic felling of some of these Nigerian leaders, because we are all in it together and are all equally exposed to the life altering vagaries, which their ineptitude and cross corruption festooned on the country, admitted the disparate proportion. The Orwellian Animal Farm situation in Nigeria cannot go on forever and should not continue to be tolerated, because no life should be more equal than the other, simply because they are the proverbial "big men" and "big women" of Nigeria and other Nigerians are not. A Nibo Nise man's life taken by a killer Fulani herdsman is as precious as a Bade''s life, also, probably taken by some Fulani hired assassins. But who knows who wanted him out of the way or ordered him killed; whether he was another victim of the continuing Fulani onslaught on the people from that region of the country, or he was simply a victim of just a random attack.
Hopefully the police will help Nigerians solve the crime quickly because of who he was, admitted Bola Ige's murder is still a cold case over 15 years after he was brutally hacked down while having dinner, his last supper, with his family inside his family home. It is very SAD that Bola Ige was killed and it is even sadder that no lessons were learnt from his killing to guard against such, leading to the now killing of a former Chief of Defense Staff, Air Vice Marshal Alexander Badeh. When will all these wanton wastage and spillage of human lives ever end in Nigeria? May his soul now rest. Adieu Alex.
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