Isiaka Busari aka
Mighty Joe is known to be one of the most violent armed robbers, a criminal who
unleashed boundless terror on many Nigerians in 1970’s.
Shortly after the notorious kingpin of armed robbery in
Nigeria, Ishola Oyenusi, was executed, his second in command, Isiaka Busari,
better known as Mighty Joe, took over the scene and became the defacto king of
the underground.
Nigeria was still coming out of the pangs of the civil war
and with the death of Oyenusi, they thought the era of violent crimes had been
nipped in the bud but little did they know that another hoodlum would spring up
and become deadlier. In Mighty Joe’s gang were ex-soldiers who were demobilized
and with their knowhow in the handling of guns and other deadly weapons, they
held the nation, particularly the South-East, to ransom, robbing and killing
with reckless abandon.
Mighty Joe was even deadlier than Oyenusi and was known to
operate at any time he felt like and taking a human’s life was nothing to him. For
many years, he constituted a big terror to the people of Lagos, the then
Federal Capital, especially around Mushin where he lived and practiced his
trade. He strode his hemisphere like a colossus from 1971 when his boss was
killed to 1973 when he was nabbed after robbing a hotel bar attendant Michael
Osayunana, of the sum of 10 naira.
Nigeria had just changed from using Pounds to Naira and
10naira was quite a huge sum of money back then. In fact, one could buy a brand
new 504 Peugeot car with that amount and still have some change left.
The arrest of Mighty Joe according to legend was as dramatic
as his reign of terror. The self-styled ‘Strongman of Idi Oro’ was caught when
someone he had earlier robbed recognized him and fingered him to the Police and
he was nabbed without any fight, as against his previous boast that no man born
of a woman can arrest him due to his strong belief in spiritual powers. He was
said to pay some herbalists huge amounts to prepare charms for him so that he
would remain invincible.
However, some people believed that Mighty Joe was arrested
on trumped-up charges, claiming he was not the great and notorious robbers the
police said he was. Some even believed that he was not even an armed robber but
a common street thug, or an area boy like we call them today. Such people
claimed that Nigeria’s biggest newspaper at that time, the Daily Time’s, was
partly owned by the Federal Government and the wealthy Alakija family of Mushin
and Mighty Joe was said to have had a tussle with one of these prominent families
who then set him up and ensured that he was executed. While he was in prison
awaiting his day at the Bar Beach, Mighty Joe was converted to Islam and even
offered prayers that the execution be reverted. That was never to be.
His journey to the stakes just like that of his master
Oyenusi, Mighty Joe had a VIP ride from Kirikiri Prison to the Bar Beach in a
police van escorted by six lorry loads of tough-looking anti-riot policemen.
Hundreds of motorists, many of them workers on their way to
their various places of work, were forced to clear out of the road as police
siren announced the approach of the man about to die.
It was a show of power which Mighty Joe loved and which
caused his doom and as he was being led to the execution stake alongside his
sidekick, Bashiru Fatola, a former soldier, the crowd erupted in joy. Another Bar
Beach spectacle was about to happen.
As he took his final walk, Mighty Joe was garbed in a white short
sleeve shirt and brown trousers while Fatola wore a yellow flowing dress.
Mighty Joe’s famous last words after he was tied to the
stakes were: “May God bless everybody,
both my friends and my enemies. Tell my wife, my mother and my in-law to keep
fit”. He was then silenced by a hail of bullets, shattering his earthly body.
Source: Legit.ng, Ourpage9ja.
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