The Assassination of Dele Giwa

Sumonu Oladele "Dele" Giwa was the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, then Nigeria's most influential newsweekly, and one of the country's most prominent investigative journalists. On the morning of 19 October 1986, at his home in Ikeja, Lagos, he opened a parcel addressed to him over breakfast; it exploded, fatally injuring him. He died shortly afterward. It was the first known letter-bomb assassination in Nigerian history. In the days before his death Giwa had been questioned by officers of the State Security Service over allegations linking him to arms-smuggling claims — allegations he and his colleagues maintained were fabricated. His lawyer Gani Fawehinmi brought repeated private prosecutions against senior security officials of the Babangida regime, including Halilu Akilu and A.K. Togun; the courts dismissed each attempt on procedural grounds. To date no person has ever been tried or convicted for the killing, and successive administrations — including the Oputa Panel of the early 2000s — have failed to resolve the case. Giwa's assassination is the founding event of contemporary Nigerian press-freedom litigation and remains the most-cited example of an unresolved high-profile killing in the country.