Dr Fatai Aborode: The tragedy that made many hearts bleed in Ibarapa
Neusroom’s Michael Orodare writes about his visit to Igangan, a small town about 160km from Lagos brought to prominence by Dr Fatai Aborode’s death.
When I arrived at Igangan around 1pm on Saturday February 27, 2021, I met a town calm and peaceful, but the calmness belies trauma and shock from the murder of Dr Fatai Aborode on December 11, 2020, by assailants alleged to be Fulani herdsmen.
It was not the first time herders would be accused of killing in Igangan. But this is one death too many. It was a murder that made many a heart bleed in Ibarapa and Nigeria.
Dr Aborode was a highflying corporate executive, businessman, and an influential figure in Ibarapa.
Born September 18, 1965, in Igangan, he was the first son of Alhaji Lasisi Folorunso Aborode, and only child of his late mother, residents told me.
The 79-year-old senior Aborode, who is the Baba Adinni of Igangan, retired from the Oyo state public service on December 31, 2001, as a Chief Environmental Officer.
His son, the deceased Dr. Aborode, grew up in Igangan where he attended Ansar-ud-deen Primary School, Igangan High School, and Igbo-Ora High School. He had his first degree in Chemistry at the University of Lagos and a master’s degree at the University of Ibadan.
The dilapidated sign post of Igangan High School where Aborode attended and taught for 2 years. Photo: Olamide Fawole, Designer: Tonte Briggs.
In the town behind the rocks, as some indigenes referred to Igangan, Aborode was known for his philanthropy, and passion for community development. From the two hours I spent in the small town, I discovered why his death is so important.
Many people in Igangan adored and drew inspiration from him. He was the go-to person for support. Some of the residents described him as that public well the whole community fetched from. Others told me he was the shoulder upon which Igangan rested.
“Dr was everything to everybody,” Wale Oladokun told me. “He was like the breath of the community that was why his death triggered all manner of things.”
Oladokun, President of the Igangan Development Advocate, is a university lecturer.
The old saw him as a model for their children. The young ran to him for support and tapped from his pool of knowledge.
Residents say they’ll remember him as the philanthropist who brought hope and prosperity the government never provided.
“As a student, Dr was very nice to me,” Taiwo Sangotunde, an undergraduate at the First Technical University, Ibadan, told me. “Whenever the students’ association visited him, he was always ready to support our projects and education financially and also guide us.”
Before travelling for his Ph.D in the UK where his family currently lives, Aborode taught briefly at Igangan High School, worked with the Federal Ministry of Works, Lagos for two years and the West African Portland Cement Company (WAPCO) now Lafarge in Sagamu, Ogun state. He left as a manager after 10 years.
“After his Ph.D., he was convinced by his colleagues to stay in the UK, but he insisted on returning to Nigeria,” his father told me. “Some pharmaceutical companies wanted him to work with them and told him to name whatever he wanted as salary and allowances. He rejected and said he didn’t want to be a salary earner but a self-employed person.”
Aborode contested for House of Representatives in 2015 under the Accord Party promising hope and change. He lost. Photo: Facebook/Fatai Aborode.
“Dr told me without [Obafemi] Awolowo’s free education he wouldn’t have moved close to the corridor of education. So he came back to give back to the community,” Oladokun said.
He returned to Nigeria before the 2015 election and was tapped by former governor Rasheed Ladoja to join the Accord Party. He was given the ticket to run for House of Representatives.
Aborode lost the election, Olugbenga Ojoawo of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won, defeating the incumbent PDP lawmaker Saubana Muraina who had spent two terms and was running for a third term. Saubana was reelected in 2019 and currently represents Ibarapa North/Central Federal Constituency.
After losing the election, he decided to quit politics but his followers urged him to consider them. So he stayed and started mechanised farming on his 200 acres farmland, according to his father.
He later joined the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and was planning to move to the PDP when he was murdered.
Many people in Igangan saw Aborode as Muraina’s potential successor.
The murder that ruffled Igangan
It was around 5:30pm on Friday December 11, 2020, the fury of the afternoon sun had passed and the broad sun was gradually sinking down. A sign that it was time to go home after spending the day on the farm, about 25 minutes drive to his residence. Dr Aborode called on his farm manager Olanrewaju Bolanle to take him home with his motorcycle.
“He used to go to the farm with his vehicle but the road is terribly bad and he couldn’t do that again,” Alhaji Aborode said.
The spot where Aborode was attacked on Igangan-Igana road, about 5 minutes to his house. Photo: Olamide Fawole, Designer: Tonte Briggs.
It was on that narrow and dusty Igangan-Igana road in the middle of an expanse of farmland that everything ended that evening.
Earlier in the afternoon, Aborode and other Muslim faithfuls (Yoruba and Fulani) had observed the jumat prayer on his farm.
“He never discriminates, whether you’re Hausa/Fulani or his Yoruba kinsmen. Dr is a friend to everyone,” a source told me.
When I visited the farm, it was about 25 minutes drive from Igangan town by motorcycle. It was on the road to the farm that his assailants struck and left him for dead after hacking him.
Arrow points at the road to Aborode’s 200 acres farm in Igangan. Photo: Google Earth. Designer: Tonte Briggs.
The spot he was attacked is about 20 minutes away from his farm and five minutes to his residence which sits at Igangan-Iganna road junction, the road to his farm. Residents told me his wrist and other parts of his body were macheted before his attackers left him. But he didn’t die immediately.
“He begged them and promised to pay them any amount to spare his life, but their mission was to take his life and they brutally did without mercy,” said Oluwole John aka Babangida.
According to ‘Babangida’, Aborode’s friend and the vigilante who rode the motorcycle that took me to the farm, the assailants emerged from the bush and left through the same route after hacking him.
On their way home, Alhaji Aborode said eyewitnesses told him that Bolanle who rode the motorcycle suddenly stopped at the spot where the assassins were laying siege.
“The road was good and they could move fast to leave the spot, but Bolanle stopped his motorcycle at that spot, left the motorcycle there and started running back home,” he said.
“A couple coming behind saw what was happening, and they were beaten by the assailants for persuading them not to kill Aborode. They saw what happened, and they didn’t touch nor hurt Bolanle as he claimed.”
“Bolanle didn’t inform anyone of Dr’s attack, instead he fled to Tapa,” Alhaji Aborode. Photo: Olamide Fawole, Designer: Tonte Briggs.
The deceased’s father said it was the couple who alerted people in the town who rushed to the scene and found Aborode lying on the ground. He had been hacked and his wrist had been macheted.
Word went round Igangan that Aborode had been attacked by Fulani herdsmen. He died at Tapa town, about 15 minutes away from Igangan while they were rushing him to a hospital in Igbo Ora.
“He asked them to take him to the nearest hospital for treatment but there is no doctor available here and they were planning to go to Igbo-Ora. But getting to Tapa he lost his life,” Alhaji Aborode narrated.
He probably would have survived but residents say there are no standard hospitals in Igangan except in Igbo-Ora.
Forty minutes, that’s how long it would take to get him to the nearest public medical facility in Igbo-Ora. But he didn’t make it there before he died.
From that moment the air in Igangan and Ibarapa became thick with tension.
“I lost hope in Igangan the day Dr was killed,” said Ibrahim Oladoke, a graduate of Ekiti State University, who sees Aborode as a role model.
Dr Aborode had tall dreams for Igangan and he already had his plans mapped out before his life was cut short.
A signpost on Dr Aborode’s farm warns against trespassing. Photo: Olamide Fawole, Designer: Tonte Briggs.
His father told me that in 2020, Dr Aborode invited American investors to Igangan who were going to build a cashew processing industry in the town for the cashew plantation on his 200-acre farm which are now ripe for harvesting. Shortly before his death, he had just harvested soybeans and was preparing to harvest cashew.
The investors were also going to build schools, provide potable water, build roads and attract banks to the town, Alhaji Aborode told me.
But all that would never happen.
His murder did not only end his dreams, it also took away the hope of a community.
Aborode was devoted to providing jobs, empowering the youths, towards community development in a town that longs for it. But he became another casualty of a failed system – insecurity and absence of good medical facilities.
Why would anyone want Aborode dead?
He suspects the farm manager and PDP leaders of arranging his son’s death. Photo: Olamide Fawole, Designer: Tonte Briggs.
We may not have the answers but his heartbroken septuagenarian father, his friend, and other members of the community who would not like to be mentioned told me they strongly believe Dr Fatai Aborode’s death was a political assassination disguised as herdsmen murder.
Aborode was murdered three days to the day he planned to defect to the PDP from ADC.
Alhaji Aborode said his son’s friend who is a former gubernatorial aspirant and State Secretary of ADC in Oyo state, Aderemi Oseni, defected to the PDP in March 2020 and had invited Aborode to join him in the PDP.
His father and other community members said his defection was postponed because a PDP leader in Igangan and member of the Oyo House of Assembly, Peter Ojedokun, lost a child. But he was murdered three days before the new date and they suspect foul play.
“I do not dispute that the assassins cannot be Fulani, Yoruba or Igbo, all I know is that there is an accord with the manager and it is politically motivated,” Alhaji Aborode said.
“He had so many supporters with him who were moving from ADC to PDP. I think that is why they are afraid.”
Alhaji Aborode told me on Saturday February 27 that “Bolanle was arrested about 10 days ago.”
He also accused Chief Samuel Olaluwo, an 80-year-old PDP chief in Igangan, of making utterances that raised suspicions.
“Bolanle is likely to know about Dr’s death,” Oluwole John aka Babangida claimed as he rained curses on the farm manager.
Dr Aborode took care of ‘Babangida’s’ hospital bills when he broke an arm in an accident and his death was a personal loss to him.
“What I suspect is that Dr may have been killed by politicians in Ibarapa who feel threatened by his popularity and know he may decide to run for House of Representatives in 2023,” another source told me.
Chief Samuel Olawuwo confirmed to me in a telephone conversation that Aborode and his group were going to join PDP before he was murdered.
He couldn’t share further details as he claimed he was in transit at the time of the call on Friday March 5, 2021.
Exactly two weeks after speaking with Chief Olaluwo and just when we were making final preparations to publish this report, sources in Igangan informed me that Chief Olaluwo had been arrested.
“He was invited by the police for questioning on Thursday in connection with Dr Aborode’s murder and he is yet to be released,” the source told me.
The Oyo police spokesperson Olugbenga Fadeyi also confirmed the arrest in a telephone conversation on Monday March 22, 2021.
“He was arrested concerning the death of Dr Aborode,” Fadeyi told me. “He has been charged and remanded, and the court proceeding is on.”
Who was afraid of Aborode?
Some residents believe Aborode was killed over his growing political influence in Ibarapa. Photo: Facebook/Fatai Aborode.
Many residents in Igangan told me Aborode was widely seen as the potential successor of Saubana Muraina who is currently in his third term at the House of Representatives.
Muraina, an Obafemi Awolowo University trained lawyer, is a former chairman of Ibarapa Central LGA and member of the Green Chamber from 2007-2015. He lost to the APC in 2015 and was re-elected in 2019 for a third term.
Some residents told me Aborode’s move to the PDP had positioned him as the party’s likely House of Representatives candidate in 2023 and he would likely win the election with the overwhelming support he enjoyed in Ibarapa land.
In Igangan I was told of an agelong bitter political rivalry which has been the bane of underdevelopment in the community.
In 1996 when Ibarapa North LGA was created from old Ifeloju LGA, the headquarter was to be sited in Igangan, but disagreement between two leaders from different political parties in Igangan led to the relocation to Ayete, a source told me.
“One political leader believes if the government in power chooses Igangan for the local government headquarter, the man who was closer to the government would take the shine, instead he pushed for the relocation to Ayete,” the source said.
The long wait for justice
Many residents who spoke with me said Aborode’s murder may have been politically sponsored, “but we cannot rule out the involvement of Fulani herdsmen.”
“His death has the signature of their attacks. From previous experiences, whenever herdsmen attack, they hack their victims and leave them with machete cuts, that was the same mark on Dr after he was attacked. They macheted his wrist and other parts of his body,” he said.
While the community waits for positive outcome from police investigations into Aborode’s murder, many do not have hope that anything good will come out of it. Some have fears that it may join the long list of unsolved murders in Nigeria that have names like Bola Ige, Funsho Williams, Dipo Dina, Ayo Daramola and many others.
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