The Ogun family wipeout

IT was tragedy of a very unusual kind, and on New Year Day. The recent crossover night in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, will remain etched in the memory of the people of the state for a long while: a couple, Kehinde and Bukola Fatinoye,  and their son, Oreoluwa, had just arrived at their residence in Ibara, Abeokuta, after attending a church service that ushered them into 2023 when assassins struck. Mr. Fatinoye, a former staffer of the Central Bank of Nigeria and his wife, an official of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, were both killed on the spot while Oreoluwa and their maid were abducted. As it turned out, Oreoluwa, the Fatinoyes’ only surviving son—they had lost his brother earlier in the year— did not survive the ordeal: his body was found in the Ogun River, near Obada Oko, with his hands tied up. The Bishop of Egba Diocese, Anglican Communion, the Rt.Revd  Emmanuel Adekunle, said: “As the leader of the church, I am yet to recover from the shock of the news. My members are down. We urge our government and security operatives to bring the people behind these killings to justice. For someone or a gang to  wipe out a family is more than wickedness. We are depending on God to reveal those behind the act.”

This incident is, to say the very least, horrendous.What kind of daredevilry could have led to the brutal wiping out of an entire family?  The Fatinoyes had just entered into the New Year but they were cut down in the most brutal fashion, and in a government residential area nonetheless. By killing and dumping the couple’s son Oreoluwa in a river, the assailants left no one in doubt about their mission: the extermination of the Fatinoye family. They committed the dastardly crime without any resistance from the state security set-up, and certainly not from the estate’s security team. It was a crime that shocked the nation, and nothing but the swift apprehension and prosecution of the perpetrators will assuage the tension in Abeokuta and, by extension, Ogun State at large.

Yet, saddening as the Fatinoye case is, it was not the only such tragic killing during the last festive season. Across the country, particularly in the South-East, there were stories of people shot dead or butchered by gunmen who turned a season of joy into one of deep sorrow for the affected families. The Fatinoye tragedy is certainly another indication of the growing extent of insecurity in the country, and the increasing pattern of organised criminality taking shape within the context of the insecurity. It therefore provides a basis to take a look at this unusual kind of crime that is gradually becoming a pattern in the country.

Increasingly, some of those things that Nigerians used to read about organised crime and mafia killings in other climes, particularly Latin America, are being reported here at home. Since these are things that the police are not necessarily familiar with in terms of intelligence and investigative methods, they must be correspondingly trained to handle them. Members of the security agencies may be sent on course to learn about such crimes, not going abroad just to enjoy themselves but to learn in real terms, and be saddled with handling them at the completion of their training. There could also be collaborations with jurisdictions that are familiar with such sophisticated crimes. We make these suggestions because apart from cults, it is drug cartels that are often implicated in such mindless killings and increasingly, the organised crime network in the world seems to have established links to parts of the country.

The perception is not absurd, as the police and security agencies in Nigeria have been largely incapable of solving high crimes. The authorities have to up the crime busting and intelligence gathering skills of the police and other security agencies through advanced training that would make them up to the task of handling high and organised crimes in the society. The government and the police ought to be perturbed by the orgy of crimes across the country and work to provide an antidote.  The extermination of a whole family under the nose of the police in Ogun State should spur the authorities to take up the gauntlet and respond with necessary firming up of the capacity of the police to unravel this particular case. That way, criminals would not take the society for granted, operating with impunity across the land.

We hope that the government and the police will rise up for once and show that this is a society under law and order, not a bastion of lawlessness and anarchical activities.