SIR: Fiona Onasanya is one of several second generation Africans and Caribbeans elected British lawmakers. Ms. Onasanya represents the constituency of Peterborough at the British Parliament. But that’s the beginning of the narrative.
The British Press recently reported that she was docked at the Old Bailey in London and found guilty of – wait for it – “perverting the course of justice.”
How? For lying to the Police to avoid a speeding ticket! She was consequently sentenced to three months in prison and will serve half of the sentence. Her brother, Festus, who pleaded guilty to three similar charges was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment.
I want you to now bring your mind – as Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had advised – “from all those gadem places” back to Nigeria and ask yourself if anything similar to that can ever happen here. The answer is a resounding “No.” The most intriguing and paradoxical thing is that it is the same Nigerians living in these foreign nations who would lead the cacophony of dissident voices shouting the most about human rights abuse and police tactics. (By the way, the Nigeria Police with its ‘Colo mentality’ is known to be highhanded but nobody seems genuinely interested in holistically addressing the existing conditions that caused the crayfish to bend).
Just picture the scenario with any distinguished senator or honourable representative you personally know or have come across. Can any member of the Federal Road Safety Commission stop their convoy for over-speeding talk less issue them speeding tickets?
Any road safety officer contemplating such actions would be deemed crazy and having a death wish as he/she would be run over and die without anything happening! Yet law-abiding Nigerians like you and I are regularly accosted for the slightest traffic infractions.
And on the rare occasions the relevant agencies summon up courage to do the right thing, it is ironically the same sufferers like you and I who begin to shout about human rights abuse and brutality. Does it then mean that the inalienable right to life of the officer so callously abridged by the lawmaker in his course of duty is subordinated to that of the ‘big man’?
Why should any suspected offender refuse to obey an ordinary police invite or jump off a moving van while being conveyed to court or stay holed up in his house and resist arrest only for the rest of us to be hailing such illegalities and be glibly sharing the news of how the persons involved are giving the Police or SSS and the government of the day a black eye on the social media? And why? Simply because the culprits belong to the particular political party we support or belong to our ethnic nationality or religious denomination!
Oh foolish and gullible Nigerians! The Frankenstein monsters of our making are giving all of us a black eye and not just a federal agency and political party temporarily in power. We are responsible for the kind of society that evolves under our collective watch. Black is black and white is white, regardless of political affiliation or tribe or creed.
The high profile political figures place themselves above the same laws guiding the rest of us with utmost impunity and disregard because they very well know they can count on the spoiler role of both fat cat senior advocates and charge-and-bail lawyers alike as well as the flagrant display of our primordial instincts to bail them out of the tightest of situations any day and time.
I dream of a day when the law will truly be no respecter of persons and Nigerians in the homeland and Diaspora would truly purge themselves of the sins of partisan omission and commission. Just imagine the kind of nation Nigeria will become when this happens.
But it has to start by us taking small selfless steps. As a Chinese proverb so aptly avers, the journey of a thousand miles starts with just one step.
- Tiko Okoye,Abuja.
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