On the occasion of Nigeria’s 2025 democracy day commemoration on June 12, 2025, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took the occasion to roll out fresh national honours on some deserving Nigerians. The roll of honourees included the living, and dead who were awarded posthumously.
It has become a tradition for the country to give national honours to deserving Nigerians. Over the years, the national honours have served to celebrate the legacy of many Nigerians who have continued to make an incredible impact against all odds.
The decision to announce it on Nigeria’s democracy day also celebrates the resilience of Nigeria’s democracy as much as those who, through their lives and works, have continued to contribute to the different strains of democracy, including freedom, philanthropy, humanity, and everything else that improves others.
Beyond the living honoured by this year’s awards, the dead, especially those who died in defence of Nigeria’s democracy, draw special attention for the sacrifices they made. The decision to honour them in death is commendable, but there is the unmistakable feeling that for those of them who were murdered, accountability, translating to justice for the crimes committed against them, would be better than any national honours.
On December 23, 2001, as the midday sun blazed down on Ibadan, the Oyo State Capital, Bola Ige, Nigeria’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice at the time was killed by gunmen. 24 years later, no one has been prosecuted and incarcerated for his death.
Five years before Bola Ige was killed, as she fought tooth and nail for the release of her husband from jail and the restoration of the victory he won in the 1993 presidential elections, Kudirat Abiola was killed in Lagos by men suspected to be agents of the state under the then military government. More than a quarter of a century later, Nigeria is yet to unveil and punish her killers. Yet, the country seeks to honour them.
For whatever a national honour is worth, especially coming from a government that continues to hemorrhage its credibility, it appears the easy road, one cowardly set upon. The tougher and higher road would be finding their killers and making them pay according to the law.
Nigeria does not owe them national honours. The debt Nigeria owes them is a debt of blood, one that can only be paid by the blood, sweat and tears of their killers under the full weight of justice. This is the highest honour that can be given them. Anything else would be the hollow and hubristic humdrum of a country hustling in vain to show that honour means anything to it.
The country that Nigeria aspires to cannot be a country where people are killed and there is neither accountability nor justice. Indeed, it is scandalous and even shameful that Nigeria’s list of national honorees is made up of Nigerians who were assassinated with no one held accountable.
Nigeria can and must do better. The failures of Nigeria’s criminal justice and the ineptitude of the Nigerian state must not be lost in the euphoria of national awards.
Fixing it is the greatest honour that can be done to the living and the dead.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
