A Vacuous Judgment on Dele Giwa

Notes for File

Over 37 years after the gruesome murder of a renowned journalist, Mr. Dele Giwa, a Federal High Court in Abuja penultimate week ordered the federal government to reopen an investigation into the incident and bring those culpable to justice.

Giwa was 39 years old when he was blown to smithereens by a parcel bomb at his residence in Lagos on October 19, 1986. His death remains one of the many unresolved murder cases in Nigeria.

Delivering judgment in a suit filed by the Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Justice Inyang Ekwo asked the government to investigate the murder and prosecute anybody found culpable. 

It is a fact that liability for crime has no time lag or statute bar, but with a setting as Nigeria’s, is there anything left to assist in the investigation or in a successful investigation? 

The Nigeria Police we know, do they keep files? And given the circumstances of Giwa’s death that was allegedly linked to the military regime, will anything be left to recover and give essence to this court order?  

What would have offered Nigerians a glimmer of hope in the tortuous advocacy for Giwa’s killers to be brought to justice was when his lawyer, the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, at the Oputa Panel, applied for a subpoena order to be issued for General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) under whose regime the murder occurred to appear before it and testify. But the former military president hired an influential lawyer, the late Chief FRA Williams (SAN), who got an ex-parte injunction to stop the panel from compelling his appearance. 

This matter dragged from the Federal High Court to the Court of Appeal where a lead judgment by Justice George Oguntade held that the Oputa Panel was an Administrative Panel of Inquiry and not a Judicial Panel. Because of this, it had no powers in law to compel anybody to appear before it. 

By the time the matter dragged to the Supreme Court, the Oputa Panel summoning Babangida had been overtaken and that also frustrated issuing its findings to the public. 

This is why the court’s decision coming now to compel the police to go back to that same matter does not really excite many people who knew how muddled up this matter had been.