The brutal murder of a top Nigerian politician has raised the spectre of a bloody election campaign in the run-up to presidential and gubernatorial polls in 2007, politicians and observers said on Friday.
Funsho Williams, a leading Lagos politician and gubernatorial hopeful, was found murdered at his Lagos home on Thursday, his hands and feet tied. He had been stabbed several times and strangled, police said.
”This is a foretaste of what we are likely to have in 2007. It is wicked, malicious and satanic for politicians to eliminate opponents,” human rights lawyer and activist Festus Keyamo said.
Many of Nigeria’s state governors expressed shock at the murder.
”There is a need to put political killings to a permanent stop or else Nigeria’s politics will remain a dirty game where decent men and women will not like to participate,” Oyo state Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala said.
The Governor of Ogun state, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, for his part qualified the assassination as ”a devastating blow to Nigeria’s democracy”.
Lagos state Governor Ashiwahu Bola Ahmed Tinubu, meanwhile, offered a reward of 10-million nairas (about $77 000) for any information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators.
Williams was a 58-year-old engineer and leading member of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). He contested gubernatorial elections in Lagos in 1999 and 2003.
His murder is the first high-profile killing in Lagos this year. It comes as campaigns for the presidential, gubernatorial and general elections in April 2007 began to gather steam across Nigeria.
The news of his murder triggered a wave of protests and clashes in some parts of Lagos, residents said.
In Ikorodu town, on the eastern outskirt of Lagos where Williams had campaigned the previous day, shops and offices were hurriedly closed following disturbances caused ostensibly by supporters of the murdered politician, residents said.
”The killing of Williams is a dangerous precedent in Lagos,” a Lagos state government official said on the condition of anonymity. ”It is an ill omen that does not bring any good to the political climate in Lagos and in Nigeria in general.”
In a sign of the gravity of the case, the federal inspector general of the police personally flew to Lagos from the capital, Abuja, to assess the situation.
The four police officers guarding Williams’s residence have been arrested for interrogation, the privately owned Channels television reported.
A number of Nigerian newspapers on Friday drew attention to the large number of politicians who have been killed since the return to civilian rule in 1999. Most of the murders have never been solved.
”In all cases, neither the killers nor their sponsors have been brought to justice,” the Nigerian daily The Guardian said.
One of the most high-profile assassinations in recent years was in December 2001 when justice minister and attorney general James Ajibola Ige was murdered. — Sapa-AFP