Did A 'Jezebel' Murder Commissioner Enoma?

When at about 10pm that fateful weekend of Friday 28th March this year the late Edo State Commissioner for Information and Orientation Barrister Calus Enoma left his residence in Benin City — in his private car with ordinary number plate without his Police orderly — to keep an appointment with a certain woman that had called him on phone ostensibly for a normal usual rendezvous little did he know that it was a gruesome journey of no return.

Mister Enoma was said to have received a call and drove himself straight to the prestigious Palm Royal Hotel situated along the Lagos-Benin Expressway in Benin City.

While there he checked in as “Nosa Aliu” asking the hotel people never to disturb him in his suite. The late Commissioner was said to be a usual caller in the hotel with fake identity. Pray, why did the Commissioner prefer disguising himself if the business he had there was of no immoral import? Why did he instruct the hotel personnel not to distract him in any manner? Or did he know by some satanic premonition that he was keeping a date with death?

In the early hours of Monday March 31st the Commissioner was found dead in his hotel suite with his dead body decomposing and swollen having spent three days and nights there unattended to! His hotel room was broken into by the law enforcement agents. Some indications point to a female company who must have played a fast one on Enoma after a bout or two of some sexual bliss. There was no trace of a gun-shot wound but a deep cut on his forehead suggested he was either strangled or hit with an object which sent him into the world beyond.

Edo State politics is one played sometimes without any modicum of scruples. Politically-motivated assassination had happened there before so that of Commissioner Enoma cannot be said to be an exception or in isolation. It would be recalled that George Idah, former Chairman of Oredo Local Government (of which Benin City is headquarters) was murdered in his office many years ago. And up until now no one has ever been charged or convicted for that heinous crime.

The PDP is irreconcilably divided in Edo State with two powerful factions battling for control of state resources and apparatus of power. None of these squabbling factions is interested in good governance but how best to loot the resources of Edo State and oppress the people further. While the Tony Anenih faction is up against the Governor Osunbor/Ogbemudia camp the political intrigue that led to the emergence of Prof. Osunbor as the Governor is fast unraveling.

The Edo State Election Petition Tribunal had last month nullified the PDP Gubernatorial victory in the state returning Adams Oshiomhole of the AC Party as the rightful winner of the rigged election. Governor Osunbor and his Commissioners (like the murdered Commissioner Enoma and Tony Ikpasaja, Special Adviser to the Governor on Communication and Public Affairs) and godfathers are now embattled appealing the judgement.

It was Mr Ikpasaja who first broke the news of the Commissioner’s disappearance disingenuously alluding to his been kidnapped by the opposition AC Party still basking in the euphoria of its Tribunal victory. Adams Oshiomhole, the AC Candidate and former President of the active NLC, had been accused by the Edo Deputy Governor Imasuen of “intimidating” the Tribunal Judges with his road-shows and mass-oriented strategies and antics on the streets. No one expected any less from the man of the people!

The Special Adviser to the Governor on Communication and Public Affairs somewhat over-reached himself when he announced Enoma’s disappearance from home even giving the AC an ultimatum to produce him or risk whatever consequencies in his imagination. That is irresponsible on the part of Mr Ikpasaja against whom the Edo State AC has declared an intention to sue for libel and defamation.

And just last weekend Mr Ikpasaja, smarting from his own political exuberance and inexperience, on behalf of the Osunbor government, issued an apologetic statement retracting his misguided diatribe against the AC and Comrade Oshiomhole: “Government considers it premature and extremely hasty to make conclusions as contained in the said statement when the police had not had the opportunity of investigating the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the commissioner and issuing a report thereon.

Accordingly, government wishes to retract the said statement in its entirety. In addition, government hereby issues unreserved apology to the Action Congress and Comrade Adams Oshiomhole for any embarrassment caused by the said statement. This is, however, without prejudice to the findings of the police pursuant to their investigation”.

Before his tragic demise Calus Enoma appeared to be a radical controversy-courting politician. As a Commissioner for Information and Orientation in the out-going Osunbor administration Enoma cut the pathetic picture of a concerned public official crying more than the bereaved (his boss) following the Tribunal’s dutiful verdict returning the people’s stolen mandate of April last year. In various press conferences Commissioner Enoma condemned the Tribunal and the honourable Judges that upheld the Edo people’s choice of a Governor.

With Ikpasaja in tow Enoma launched a media war aimed at discrediting the Judges and their sound judgement. But only few were fooled!

The late Commissioner’s wife, his only daughter and his aged father are all crying for justice asking the police authorities to unearth the circumstances surrounding their breadwinner’s sudden death! The father has asked the police and government to interrogate the former DG of Edo Broadcasting Service (EBS) whom his late son had accused of threatening to deal with him for sacking him from his plum perch.

But while one expresses his condolences it is questionable if late Enoma’s bereaved old dad or his wife had advised him to allow justice run its full course as he railed against the Tribunal judges and the verdict they reached which went down well with majority of Edos at home and abroad.

Who murdered Commissioner Calus Enoma? Finding the murderer(s) by the Police soon is akin to visiting God in heaven! Or Satan in hell!! The Nigerian Police Force under the stinkingly corrupt Sunday ‘Mugu’ Ehindero and President Obasanjo that did not unravel any mystery surrounding many unresolved murders that were witnessed horribly from 1999 to 2007 cannot now be counted on, even when Sir Mike Okiro is in charge, to do miracle in spite of empty boasts of top cops. The list is inexhaustible: Chief Bola Ige, former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice murdered in Ibadan, Marshal Harry in Port Harcourt, Pa Alfred Rewane in Lagos, and the Igwes in Onitsha, etc.

Flashback 1986: Dele Giwa, the investigative ‘Newswatch’ founding Editor-in-chief was bombed into pieces in the traumatizing presence of his little boy Billy by Ibrahim Babangida’s security Chiefs. Despite judicial efforts for years for justice to be done Lagos-based radical lawyer Chief Gani Fawehenmi has always met official cover-up and legal brick wall and hiccups.

Who murdered the hard-working Commissioner Calus Enoma and why? Since a certain ‘Jezebel’ was said to have passed a call across that pulled him out of his secured residence (for a usual weekend sexual bliss perhaps) it then stands to reason that she must have engineered his assassination. Or an entrenched political enemy must have recruited or employed the services of the ‘Jezebel’ to do the dirty job. In any case the police detectives probing how and why he was murdered have their job well cut out.

The late Calus, according to his father Pa Richard Enoma, was not a womaniser! For the father: “They deceived my child that bodyguards should not follow him. He did not go there (to the hotel) to chase women. He was not interested in women. The person who booked the hotel, the person who called him should all be investigated”. Fine talk father but the junior Enoma, your son, you knew when he was practising law and out of the political horizon in Edo State may not have been the same person after the political baptism of fire as Commissioner.

Politics in Nigeria corrupts good morals; there’s politics of corruption and corruption of politics! The late Commissioner Calus Enoma is a victim of political intrigues in Edo State and more than any other factor he provoked or aided his untimely tragic death.

Adieu Calus! May you never be a politician in your next coming! And even if you insist on being one, having experienced the limitless opulence and impunity associated with it in Nigeria, then not the cannon fodding type please.