“‘They’ve Got Me’: Dele Giwa and Nigeria’s Unfinished Political and Journalistic History”.

The phrase “They have got me” is one of the most haunting statements in the history of Nigerian journalism. The difficult question is: Who did Dele Giwa mean by “they”?

The most responsible answer is: we cannot say with certainty. There is no surviving evidence

in which Giwa explicitly identified the people he meant.

On a beautiful Sunday, 19 October 1986, Dele Giwa was at his home in Ikeja, Lagos, with Kayode Soyinka, then London Bureau Chief of Newswatch. A parcel was delivered to his house. It reportedly carried the appearance of an official government communication, and Giwa had received government correspondence before. When he opened the parcel, it exploded.

Giwa was critically injured but did not die immediately. He was rushed to First Foundation Hospital, Opebi/Ikeja, where doctors, led by his friend Dr. Tosin Ajayi, attempted to save him. Contemporary accounts and the later biographical reconstruction record that, as his condition deteriorated, he told Ajayi:

“Tosin, they’ve got me.”

He died at approximately 12:27 p.m. that day.

That detail is important because the phrase was not necessarily simply “They have got me” as an expression of fear. According to the detailed account, Giwa addressed Tosin Ajayi directly and said, “Tosin, they’ve got me.”

So, who were “they”?

There are three ways to understand the historical evidence.

1. “They” could have meant the people behind the bomb.

This is the most natural interpretation. Giwa had been under extraordinary pressure from Nigeria's security establishment immediately before his assassination.

He had been questioned by the State Security Service (SSS), including Deputy Director Lt. Col. A.K. Togun, and had also been contacted/questioned in connection with allegations involving arms and political matters. His colleagues and lawyer subsequently drew attention to the extraordinary sequence of security contacts preceding the bombing.

There was also the telephone contact involving Col. Halilu Akilu of Military Intelligence shortly before the bomb arrived. According to accounts preserved in the historical record, Akilu had contacted Giwa's home seeking his address, and Giwa subsequently spoke with him. The parcel arrived shortly afterwards.

That sequence is one reason the word “they” has remained so powerful.

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2. “They” could have referred to a wider security/political establishment.

This is where we must be careful.

Over the years, allegations have pointed toward senior security officials and ultimately toward the government of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who was Nigeria's military president in 1986. Chief Gani Fawehinmi pursued the matter vigorously and sought prosecution of Babangida, Halilu Akilu and A.K. Togun.

Even thou, allegation is not the same thing as historical proof.

The courts did not establish that Babangida ordered Giwa's assassination. Indeed, the 1987 biography of Giwa by Onukaba Adinoyi-Ojo and others concluded that they could not answer the fundamental question of who killed him.

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3. “They” may have been Giwa's intuitive recognition that the people he feared had finally succeeded.

This may actually be the most psychologically revealing interpretation.

In a north shell, Giwa was not an ordinary victim who suddenly encountered an unexplained explosion. He was a Journalist who had spent days dealing with Security Interrogations, Accusations And Political Pressure. He had already expressed concern about his safety.

Then a parcel arrived.

It exploded.

And while dying, he told the doctor:

“Tosin, they've got me.”

That suggests that, in those final moments, Giwa may have believed that the threat he had been experiencing had finally caught up with him.

But whether he knew exactly who had sent the bomb is another matter.

The most important distinction

We should therefore analysis and  separate what Giwa said from what later Nigerians concluded.

QUESTION	WHAT THE HISTORICAL RECORD SUPPORTS
Did Giwa say “they've got me”?	Yes.
Did he identify the bombers by name?	No, only some surviving reliable evidence establishes this.
Was he under security pressure before his death?	Yes.
Were senior security officials questioned or implicated circumstantially?	Yes.
Was Babangida accused by Gani Fawehinmi?	Yes.
Was Babangida legally established as the person who ordered the killing?	No.
Has the identity of the killers been conclusively established?	No.

And there is an extraordinary historical irony here.

In the dying  moment of Dele Giwa, his last words became another piece of evidence in the mystery surrounding his own assassination.

The Nigerian National Library's digitized copy of the 1987 biography is particularly revealing, because its authors explicitly stated that, despite interviewing people directly connected with the events, they could not answer the question “Who killed Dele Giwa?”

So, to the best of Nigerian history, we cannot responsibly say that “they” definitely meant IBB, Akilu, Togun, the SSS, the Military Government, Or Any Particular Individual.

We can only say that Giwa appears to have understood “they” as the people he believed were responsible for what was happening to him — and he died before he could explain who those people were.

That is precisely why “They've got me” remains one of the most chilling unfinished sentences in Nigeria's political and journalistic history.

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