December 11, 2021 makes it one year that Dr. Fatai Aborode was murdered at Igangan, a town in Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. On that fateful day, Dr. Aborode, who was riding on a motorcycle alongside his Farm Manager, Mr. Bolanle Olanrewaju, was returning from his farm along Apodun village, when four men forced them off the motorcycle they were riding. Thinking they were armed robbers, Dr. Aborode was said to have pleaded with them, promising to give whatever amount of money they demanded. As the couple who witnessed the incident recounted, the attackers told Dr. Aborode that they did not come for his money, rather they were paid to terminate his life.

The attackers, described as Fulani herdsmen by the Farm Manager, were armed with guns, machetes, and charms. After forcing them off the motorcycle, they separated them. While two of the assailants took Dr. Aborode at gunpoint to a little distance away from the road, one of them held the Farm Manager at gunpoint about 500 meter in opposite direction of where Dr. Aborode was held. The last attacker was said to have held the couple who chanced upon the unfortunate event at gunpoint some distance away from where both the Farm Manager and Dr. Aborode were held.

Given the eerie silence that enveloped the surroundings, the couple could overhear the attackers who, having emptied their guns on Dr. Aborode and realizing that he did not die from the gunshots, started hitting him with their machetes. Fearing that Dr. Aborode might overcome his assailants, the two other attackers joined their colleagues in their bid to kill Dr. Aborode. While the attackers were at it, both the couple and the Farm Manager took their chances and fled. Realizing and fearing that the escapees might alert rescuers, the attackers turned away from Dr. Aborode momentarily and started shooting at the fleeing trio, as they fled.

Late Dr. Fatai Aborode, assassinated on 11 December, 2020 at Igangan, Oyo State

By the time rescuers arrived, the assailants had left, leaving Dr. Aborode clinging to life in a pool of his own blood. After the initial first aid, Dr. Aborode was rushed to Olugbon hospital, Igboora but in between Tapa and Aiyete community, his condition grew worse, and by the time he got to the hospital at Igboora, he had died. The doctors at the hospital confirmed that Dr. Fatai Aborode died from wounds sustained in the attack.

Sunday Igboho on Dr. Aborode’s Assassination

Following his escape from the scene of the attack, Dr. Aborode’s Farm Manager, Bolanle Olanrewaju, claimed to have run to the Police Station to report the attack on Dr. Aborode, but the Police refused to act. He further claimed to have left the Police Station and headed to town to get a car that could take Dr. Aborode to the hospital.

Possibly through the action of the couple who also escaped, the news of the attack had reached the family before the Farm Manager arrived and people had rushed to the location. The rescuers did not labor hard to locate Dr. Aborode, as he had crawled to the road, calling for help.

According to the Farm Manager, the assailants were Fulani herdsmen and, given the involvement of Fulani herdsmen in armed robbery and kidnapping that had become prevalent not only in Igangan, but the entire Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State, no one was surprised when Mr. Adeniyi Sunday Adeyemo (aka Sunday Igboho) issued an ultimatum to the Sarkin Fulani of Igangan, Alhaji Salihu AbdulKadir, to vacate Igangan.

Mr. Sunday Igboho, in different video clips, maintained that the Sarkin not only ordered the assassination of Dr. Aborode, but also supervised how Dr. Aborode was killed. In one video clip, Sunday Igboho claimed that Dr. Aborode, having worked for 20 years in Germany, returned to Igangan to start commercial farming. In yet another video clip, Sunday Igboho claimed that Fulani herders invaded and destroyed Dr. Aborode’s farm and that, on account of this, Dr. Aborode visited the Sarkin to lodge a complaint. Rather than listening to Dr. Aborode, the Sarkin ordered his men to tie Dr. Aborode to a tree and butchered him, Igboho claimed.

Sunday Igboho, with followers numbering in their hundreds, arrived at Igangan at the expiration of the ultimatum issued to the Sarkin, armed with AK47s and other military-grade materiel. At the end of the visit to Sarkin’s abode at Igangan, not less than four of Sarkin’s men were killed, with properties ranging from cars and houses to other valuables razed. The Sarkin and the remaining members of his family had since relocated to Baboko, Ilorin where they originated.

In an exclusive interview with both Mrs. Olanrewaju Aborode and Mr. Abdulahi Aborode, Dr. Aborode’s widow and son respectively, I gathered that except for attending conferences in Germany, Dr. Aborode neither lived nor studied in Germany as claimed by Sunday Igboho. Debunking Sunday Igboho’s claims further, Dr. Aborode’s widow noted that although Fulani herdsmen had perpetrated crime and criminality, ranging from farm-encroachment and killings, robbery and rape, etc., in the area, the Sarkin and the entire Aborode’s family had a cordial relationship that spanned many years. According to Mrs. Aborode, penultimate week before Dr. Aborode’s gruesome murder, Dr. Aborode invited the entire Fulani community to bring their animals to his farm, giving them over 45 acres of poorly grown corn fields to feed their animals. Alhaji Salihu AbdulKadir, the expelled Sarkin Fulani, not only confirmed this claim, but also noted that on the same week that Dr. Aborode was murdered, he – Dr. Aborode gave him and other Fulanis in the area the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand naira (250,000.00 naira) to purchase salt for their cattle.

On the day that he was killed, according to Mrs. Aborode, out of about 40 people who were working on Dr. Aborode’s farm, 17 were Fulani women. Alhaji Salihu not only corroborated this, but also described late Aborode as a peaceful man, saying: “It is sad and shocking to hear of his gruesome murder. Who would ever wish a fellow man to be killed in a brutal manner like that? He was nice to the Fulani community. He used to engage some of our people during harvest. Only recently, he gave us salt to share among our people”.

Dr. Fatai Aborode, as his family revealed, completed his secondary school education at Igboora High School in 1984, obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Lagos in 1988, and his Master of Science in Chemistry from the University of Ibadan in 1991, before proceeding to the University of Aberdeen, a public research university in Aberdeen, Scotland for his Doctorate Degree. He bagged his PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2011. Between June 5, 1995, and February 9, 2007, Dr. Fatai Aborode worked in the Quality Management System Department of the Lafarge Cement WAPCO Nigeria Plc, Sagamu, Ogun State. He rose to head the Department before retiring to start his own business in October 2007.

As the Chairman and CEO of Kunfayakun Global Treasures, Dr. Fatai was supplying charcoal to Germany, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, among other Western nations. He re-invested his earnings in commercial agribusiness, employing over 200 youths in the process. In 2015, he detoured into politics, contesting to represent Ibarapa North in the House of Representatives under the banner of the Accord Party. Although he lost, he however remained active politically. He was about to declare his candidacy under the banner of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) when he was gruesomely murdered. He was not just a quintessential Yoruba man who was proud of his ethnic identity and religion, he was also a people-person. His politics was one-of-a-kind. Without setting up a foundation, he empowered many youths across Ibarapa, introducing to them commercial farming and how to get into the export agribusiness. He empowered women and girls and encouraged youths, in general, to get education.

Did Sunday Igboho deliberately twist the truth about Dr. Aborode’s life-journey, his relationship with the Fulani pastoralists at Igangan and the circumstances of his death? If not a deliberate act but exaggeration of the fact, especially against the backdrop of multiple cases of farm invasion, rape and killings by Fulani herdsmen that dominated the landscape across Nigeria in recent time; what role did the fabricated or exaggerated narratives play in the anti-Fulani violence that arose in Oke-Ogun, Ibadan, and the entire Southwest Nigeria following Dr. Aborode’s death? Could Sunday Igboho have deliberately steered attention away from the real killers of Dr. Aborode?

Dr. Aborode’s son, Abdullahi, while reacting to these questions, tearfully noted that the immediate family of Dr. Aborode got to know of his death on social media and, as if that was not bad enough, they “were told two stories, one by the Farm Manager and the other that was made popular by Mr. Sunday Igboho. We don’t know the actual details. As we were not there, we cannot go on the record to say this is exactly how he was killed and why he was killed. What is however evident is that he was a victim of the chronic insecurity in Nigeria.”

Chief Adeniyi Sunday Adeyemo (aka Sunday Igboho)

Who is Sunday Igboho?

Besides being a political thug involved in all manner of nefarious activities for politicians, Sunday Igboho gained fame for his involvement in the Ife-Modakeke conflict. He was alleged to have participated in series of mayhem, many of which led to the death of many people during the intra-ethnic conflict. It was also argued that the Peace and Reconciliation Commission that was put together by the Obasanjo-led government recommended Sunday Igboho for trial and that his linkages with the late PDP stalwart, Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu and former Oyo State Governor under the PDP, Senator Rasheed Oladoja, who, it was claimed brought Dr. Fatai Aborode into politics and the Accord Party, paved the way for Igboho’s relocation from Modakeke where he was a motorcycle repairer to Ibadan and eventual escape from possible prosecution.

Sunday Igboho, obviously basking in the success of his exploits at Igangan, led a campaign to expel all Fulanis from Yorubaland. With his newfound popularity, he took his agitation to a new height – demanding for Yoruba secession from Nigeria – a development that has since landed him in trouble. Notwithstanding his past, Sunday Igboho is a millionaire who is seen as a nationalist and a hero by many Yoruba people.

Demand for Justice and Closure

In February 2021, the Governor of Oyo State – Engineer Seyi Makinde confirmed that Dr. Fatai Aborode was not killed by Fulani herdsmen as Sunday Igboho made many people to believe and that the assassination of the Analytical Chemist, politician, and farmer was, in fact, a political assassination. On March 18, the Oyo State Police Command announced the arrest and detention of Pa Olawuwo, a stalwart of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in connection with the murder of Dr. Fatai Aborode. Pa Olawuwo is a chieftain of the PDP from the Ibarapa geopolitical zone. As Mrs. Aborode noted, after the arrest of Pa Olawuwo, Dr. Aborode’s Farm Manager was also arrested. Both were later released and could be seen walking freely today in Igangan. “What has happened to the court process?”. She wondered bitterly.

As this author’s investigation revealed, after charging Pa Olawuwo to court, members of the Judiciary in Oyo State went on strike, necessitating a delay in the court process. Notwithstanding this, Mrs. Aborode reasoned that, in the first place, credible reasons must have existed for the police to charge Pa. Olawuwo to court and if the court could find the reasons genuine enough to have allowed the court process, the release of both the Farm Manager and PDP stalwart before the conclusion of the trial made little or no sense. Her fear of a possible truncation of the court process was shared by many in the Oke-Ogun area and Oyo State in general. “Was Chief Bola Ige, former Governor of Oyo State and a serving Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, not assassinated in Ibadan, Oyo State and, till date, who knows his killers?” A politician who preferred anonymity asked me during an interview.

Rumor making the rounds in Igangan is to the effect that the sum of 2 million naira was offered some individuals within the PDP in Oke-Ogun to deliver Dr. Fatai Aborode to the assassins. Another rumor making the rounds in Oke-Ogun and Oyo State was that on the previous night before the assassination, Dr. Aborode was at a PDP meeting where a stalwart of the part demanded why many within the party effortlessly gravitated to Dr. Aborode despite that they were the ones who brought Dr. Aborode to the party, a charge to which Dr. Aborode was reported to have replied: “Aja iwoyi lo le pa Ehoro iwoyi” – only contemporary dogs can kill contemporary rabbits.

To what extent were these rumors true? Who were the party members involved in the altercation, if true? Only an honest and transparent investigation can tell. A situation where the wheel of justice grinds slowly certainly gives room for rumor, prevarications, and fear. Since the courts in Oyo State resumed duty, no one, not even the governor who promised Dr. Aborode’s aged father, his widow, and children justice, deemed it fit to update the family on further developments. As Mrs. Aborode noted: “Seeing the Farm Manager and Pa. Olawuwo walking free in Igangan without the completion of the court process is an insult to the memory of Dr. Fatai Aborode. We are not accusing the Farm Manager and Pa. Olawuwo of any crime, we only want justice and closure.”

Dear Governor Makinde, even if the family of Dr. Fatai Aborode has stopped to ask, please, permit me to ask: Who killed Dr. Fatai Aborode?