The Nation Newspaper

Author: The Nation

  • Court remands ‘okada’ rider in prison custody for throwing baby into river

    A Chief Magistrates’ Court in Minna has ordered that a 20-year-old commercial motorcyclist popularly called ‘Okada’ rider, Mustapha Aliyu be remanded in prison custody for throwing his three-month-old baby boy into a river.

    Aliyu is standing trial on a charge of culpable homicide contrary to Section 221 of the Penal Code.

    The prosecutor, ASP Daniel Ikwoche, told the court that Amina Zakaria, the   mother of the baby had reported the matter to the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on Sept. 8.

    Ikwoche said that the complainant of Keranbadi village in Borgu Local Government Area of Niger alleged that she had the baby for the defendant out of wedlock.

    Read Also: Okada operator beats wife to death for refusing to breastfeed baby

    The prosecutor said that the complainant alleged that the defendant had visited her at about 9:30p.m., on Sept. 7 and took the baby away.

    Ikwoche said that the defendant took the child to his own village, Tamanai.

    There, he threw the baby into a river where he eventually drowned, the prosecutor said.

    When the charge was read to the defendant, he pleaded guilty and begged the court for leniency.

    Chief Magistrate Hauwa Yusuf, however, declined to take his plea, saying that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the matter.

    Yusuf directed the prosecuting police officer to forward a duplicate copy of the case file to the State Director of Public Prosecution, (DPPs) for legal advice.

    She, thereafter, adjourned the case until Oct. 10 for further mention.

  • Nurturing the Sino-Nigerian Friendship: The Sam Maduka Onyishi’s way

    To the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Peace Mass Transit Ltd, Chief Samuel Maduka Onyishi, awards and recognitions have become a common thing. Make no mistake -they don’t come cheap by any means. But since he has distinguished himself and business in an indigenous way, these rewards always come his way.
    On a daily basis, Dr Onyishi, a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, does various kinds of philanthropic acts. For some of these acts, he hardly keeps track of them all.
    He was once quoted as saying, “Whatever act of kindness or philanthropy I do is between me and my God. I don’t do them to get any special praise or recognition from anybody or government. “Let the beneficiaries tell their own story.”
    Indeed, as foretold, the beneficiaries are “telling their own stories,” by themselves, as evidenced by the recent award by the Chinese Alumni Association of Nigeria, on Chief Onyishi as “Outstanding Nigerian Advocate on China/Nigeria Relations.”
    The recognition is part of the “October 1st Awards”, for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and Nigeria’s 59th Independence anniversary.
    The Peace Mass Transit founder Onyishi has been at the forefront of the Nigeria-China relations with business connections and investments, dating back to nearly three decades. Remarkably, his involvement with China isn’t all about business: In 2009, he sponsored five Nigerians to China on fully paid undergraduate scholarship. All of them are back after graduation and are in different spheres of life, promoting Chinese language and Sino-Nigeria relations in general.
    Dr Onyishi’s citation read at the “October 1st Awards,” highlighted some of his investments in, and association with Chinese blue-chip companies, including Foton Motor Corporation, Tianji Meiya Automobile Vehicle Company and Xiamen Kinglong Automobile Motors.
    The award, which came with cash, was presented to him by the Chinese Language Coordinator at the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti, Ejemezu Charles. Charles is one of the members of the pioneer team that benefited from Dr Onyishi’s scholarship.
    Everything being equal, for Dr Onyishi and Peace Mass Transit Ltd, these awards are not about to dry up.

  • Our raw deal with killer soldiers in Taraba

    Two of the five operatives of the Inspector General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT), Inspector Sanni Abib a.k.a. Osha and his team member, Abu Yunus, have revealed how they managed to escape from the IRT operation vehicle in Ibi town, Taraba State when soldiers allegedly rained bullets on the vehicle in a bid to rescue the millionaire kidnap kingpin, Hamisu Bala Wadume.

    The IRT operatives had captured Wadume and were conveying him from Ibi to the police headquarters in Jalingo when some soldiers attacked their vehicle, killing three police officers and one civilian while they also left other occupants of the vehicle with bullet wounds, after which they unshackled Wadume and set him free.

    Narrating how he managed to escape being shot dead by the soldiers allegedly on a mission to rescue Wadume, who was believed to be very close to some of the soldiers, one of the lucky survivors of the attack, Inspector Abib, said: “I am the team leader of the IRT operatives who went to Ibi, Taraba State to arrest the kidnap kingpin Wadume. I was face to face with death but I conquered by the grace of God Almighty.

    “We had first gone to Jalingo, Kari Area Command to process our documents, after which we went to Ibi Police Station and booked our movement. There is only one road that leads into Ibi town, and it is the same road one must take to get out of it.

    “There are also three checkpoints on the road. The first is manned by soldiers. The second is manned by mobile police officers while the third checkpoint is also manned by soldiers. It means that if you are entering Ibi, the first checkpoint you see is one manned by soldiers. And if you are leaving the town, the first checkpoint you see is soldiers’ checkpoint. There is a gap of two to three kilometres between the checkpoints.

    “When we arrested the kidnap suspect Wadume, we handcuffed him and also chained his legs, put him inside our IRT operation vehicle and started our journey back to the police headquarters when the soldiers started attacking us.

    “At the time we left Ibi town and were about to cross the three checkpoints, we did not expect that the soldiers would attack us. So, it was a big surprise, because they were aware of our official movement and our mission.

    “On our way into the town, we got to the first checkpoint manned by soldiers and they passed us. The second checkpoint manned by mobile police officers passed us and the third one manned by soldiers also passed us.

    “After due documentation, we went and arrested Wadume. And as we headed back to the police headquarters, we passed the first army checkpoint and the second checkpoint manned by mobile policemen. But as we were getting near the last army checkpoint, we noticed that one Picnic vehicle was following us, and at a point, they started firing at our vehicle.

    “We were all the more surprised when we noticed that the occupants of the vehicle were soldiers. And as we were still wondering about the attack by soldiers in a Picnic vehicle, another vehicle, a Hilux GPMP with soldiers carrying machine guns, overtook the Picnic vehicle and started firing at our vehicle.

    “The way they sprayed bullets made our vehicle to summersault three or four times. To get out of our bullet-riddled vehicle which had tumbled, I had to use my leg to break the window glass. Seeing that the soldiers had not stopped firing, I crawled some distance before I dashed into a nearby bush. But on noticing that about three soldiers were pursuing us and firing at the same time, I jumped into a river and remained in it for about 30 minutes. When they could not see me, they went back to their checkpoint with their AK47 rifles and I came out of the river and continued my escape bid.

    “I walked carefully through the bush, knowing that it could contain various traps and dangerous snakes.

    “When I got to Ibi Police Station, I heaved a sigh of safety, then I fell down any fainted. When I rediscovered myself, I discovered that I had bullets brushes on my right leg and in the back. The officers at the police station rushed me to the general hospital in Ibi for medical attention.

    “It was at the hospital that I met my other colleagues who had also escaped from the bloody scene. That was where I saw Mark being operated upon to remove the bullets the soldiers had pumped into his tummy. I also met Mathias with bullet wounds on his right leg. I stayed in the hospital for five days before I was discharged and I went to Ibi Police Station from where we finally left.”

    Abib described the death of his colleague, Mark, in the hospital as a particularly painful experience, saying that he wept profusely when he saw the deceased colleague’s condition before he eventually gave up the ghost.

    Another survivor, Abu Yanusa, described his escape as sheer miracle.

    “My survival was a miracle. The way the soldiers were firing made me to think that the bullets got me. But to God be the glory, there was no fatal wound when I got to the general hospital,” he said.

    Asked how he managed to escape, he said: “It was the team leader that showed us the way when he used his leg to break the vehicle’s window glass. When he jumped out, I followed him. Even when he was crawling I followed suit. Because of persistent firing by the soldiers, crawling was the only safe way to get away from the scene as fast as possible.

    “However, when we noticed that about three soldiers were pursuing us fully armed with AK47 and firing indiscriminately, we ran in different directions. As for me, I ran in the direction where I could quickly get to the main road. But my mind skipped a beat when I saw some natives with machetes and clubs advancing aggressively towards me. They surrounded me and asked me to identify myself, and I did so immediately.

    “I told them how we came to arrest the suspect Wadume and how the army came to rescue him and how they fired our vehicle and wanted to kill all of us, hence our decision to run in order to save our lives.

    “After explaining to them, they believed me. They said they knew Wadume as a notorious kidnapper.

    They asked where I was going and told them that I was going to the area command, and they followed me down to the area. When we got to a point a few meters to the area command office, they pointed at the place and went back.

    “From the Area Command, I was taken to the hospital where I met my team leader, Inspector Abib and others who had escaped. I also saw Mark who they were operating on as a result of the bullets in his tummy.”

    The suspected kidnapper, Hamisu Bala Wadume, had confessed his murderous escape from the grip of the operatives of Intelligence Response Team on August 6 in  Ibi, Taraba State. Speaking in Hausa language, Wadume said he escaped from the custody of IRT operatives when they came under attack from soldiers attached to Battalion 93, Takum, Taraba State, as they conveyed him from the scene of his arrest.

    The Army later explained that the soldiers attacked the IRT operatives because they mistook them for criminals, following a distress call they had received. In the said attack, three policemen and a civilian were killed, while five other operatives sustained injuries.

    Wadume was, however, re-arrested on the eve of Monday, August 19, as revealed by the Force Public Relations Officer, Mr. Frank Mba, a Deputy Commissioner of Police.

    In his confessions, Wadume, virtually implicated soldiers at the Battalion 93, Takum, Taraba State over his escape from the IRT custody. He said the soldiers were the ones who set him free by cutting his leg chains and handcuffs at an army base and he went home a free man before he was rearrested by IRT operatives in Kano.

    The kidnap suspect, who was alleged to have received millions of naira as ransom from his victims, had confessed thus:  “My name is Hamisu Bala Wadume. The police came to arrest me. When they arrested me, the army chased after them and opened fire. From there, they (soldiers) took me to their headquarters, and cut off my handcuffs. I went back to my house and the police came to re-arrest me.”

    Preliminary investigation reportedly revealed that the suspected kidnap kingpin and the Divisional Crime Police Officer in Ibi community had exchanged 200 calls.

    However, it is still not clear when the army authority will release the findings of the panel they appointed to look into the matter towards proper trial of those indicted in the ugly incident.

  • Traits that tarnish Nigeria’s image

    This country is endowed with some of the best brains in the world – brains deployed to achieving exploits in science and technology and in businesses.

    We have an Ogunlesi from Sagamu, Remo in Ogun State owning one of the two prime airports in London; some of the best surgeons in the USA of Igbo descent and an Aliko Dangote of Northern extraction, holding his own in the world of high profile businesses like Bill Gate and Richard Branson, etc, etc

    The people referred to above rose through the ranks, though in meticulous manners, to get to their present stations in life. Theirs were not by sudden flights; but because they took years of toil and sweat to get to where they are today, they have come to be celebrated in positive light by those who know and appreciate the quality of their achievements.

    On the flip side of the coin are some of our citizens, from virtually all the tribes of this country, whose sources of wealth are questionable and who attract so much of needless and negative attention to themselves within and outside our shores, that it was a matter of time before the prying eyes of the saner world got fixed on them.

    Our perverted values and moral decadence helped in the nurturing of the negative traits that our citizens have exhibited, without qualms and with little or no sanctions in this country, and which have emboldened them to export those traits that are hardly tolerable, to other lands.

    Some of our citizens have perfected the art of living on other people’s labor, exploiting them in mindless ways no better than murderers who take peoples lives without human feeling. Some had even gone the audacious length of establishing institutions like ‘yahoo, yahoo schools’ where students are recruited, for a fee, to come and study fraudulent schemes of withdrawing huge sums of money from other people’s banks without their victims knowledge.

    A media report of the discovery of a yahoo, yahoo school somewhere in this country, went viral some months ago and I have not read of a police denial of the existence of such an occurrence. It can then be assumed to be true reportage. But has there been any update? Given our ways in this country, the criminally-minded guys behind such school of fraud must have bought their way out of trouble, away from the klieglight of negative publicity.

    The ranks of criminals are swelling because virtually every institution of state is profiting from the proceeds of fraud. Police paste stickers everywhere that bail is free but that injunction is observed more in the breach. One needs to get involved in being taken to a police station even for  issues laymen believe to be trivial, to experience the killing charges imposed to get police bail, that are advertised as free!

    One has had stories of police investigators exhibiting the dubious skills of assisting complainants to write incriminating reports against ‘foes’ and at the same time helping such suspects to write submissions that will help them wriggle out of trouble.

    Some lawyers are happy to take briefs from suspects they know to be of questionable character, not because they are interested in serving the cause of justice but because they are more interested in swelling their bank accounts, at the detriment of society. How many lawyers and law enforcement agencies have been rewarded with plots of land, some in choice areas, for assisting in the perversion of justice or in procuring dubious court judgements ?

    Preachments and admonitions by genuinely concerned citizens inside and outside of government are pooh-poohed by the large number of criminals out there undetected, who must have sworn to make efforts to rid the nation of corruption and allied crimes unachievable.

    The growing army of people with virtually incurable corrupt tendencies seem to be winning their ways through fraud and other malfeasance. A look around the academia, politics, industry et al confirm this fact. And, this set of people feel so confident and audacious that the detestable things they do in this country and get away with, and for which the nation seems powerless to combat and wipe out, can be exported and practiced elsewhere.

    The xenophobic onslaughts on some of our nationals in South Africa are condemnable no doubt; but have we taken pains to dig into the remote causes of the brouhaha ? Are our nationals in the place conducting themselves properly or do they think what their country allowed, will also be embraced in other lands? From the other side of the stories we have been regaled with, are negative revelations which no country except Nigeria can tolerate and live with.

    In any case, no country can be as tolerant as Britain where for several years, some of our citizens are living very expensive lives of scam and fraud. Some of them live on credit card  fraud and find it difficult to cover their tracks. Their money-spending spree has no parallel. The cars they ride, the ostentation they display at open parties; and all these by people without visible means of livelihood, give intelligence agencies in those advanced societies not-too-hard nuts to crack, to burst the fake lives they live.

    When I was growing up in the 60s, Chinese in their first time foray to this country, were scammed by dubious businessmen who routed letters of credit to them from their so-called “Central Bank of Ijebu Igbo” when everyone knows that any apex bank of a country is usually located at its capital city, not in any remote surburb.

    I grew up as a matured adult and as a businessman in the United Kingdom some 18 years ago, to be reminded of a similar case, when someone hacked into my internet and said before I could claim a humongrous win in a lottery I never played, I should pay some £750 into an account at a non-existent Bank of Luton. That ploy didn’t jell with me because I knew Luton too well as I walked the streets of that town anytime I was free from my training school in Milton Keynes, to the extent that I could tell how many banks were life in that town, on the way to the North of England.

    The sophistication with which our citizens ply their illegal and absolutely intolerable trades in developed nations of the world have forced their hosts to the drawing board of honing their scientific and technological skills to detect and deter criminality prevalent in the conduct of some of our citizens.

    If the UK and the USA in spite of their advancement in the detection and prevention of crimes are already at their tether’s end coping with our people’s ways, who can blame South Africa who, by the xenophobic reaction of her citizens, equally exposed herself as a developing country with scant regard for civilised behaviour.

    I sympathize with innocent victims of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa but if the truth must be said, many of the woes brought on the others were self-inflicted and such people have no one but themselves to blame.

    If Nigeria, by the clumsy and partisan ways of some of her officials, can tolerate the condemnable behaviors of her citizens and cannot dissuade them from their mindless and murderous pursuit of money, some other nations with appreciable degree of conscience, cannot live with it. Our people talk of children who refuse to imbibe proper home training, will be taught to toe the line and be wiser from outside. There should be no quibbling about it: what is bad, has no other name!

  • Legality, politics and justice

    The  dismissal  of the  2019   Presidential  election petition  of by the Election Tribunal in Nigeria this week,  together  with the allegation in   the   UK  that the British PM  Boris  Johnson lied to the Queen  in getting her consent to prorogate  Parliament,  provide  food for thought today. We  shall  look  at these two  issues in the light of  the statement that the law  can  be  an  ass  at times and also  wonder  aloud   how   legal  erudition can   somewhat   turn to  buffoonery given  the reasons that eminent lawyers pursue in open court to  advance their clients cases and interests. We    also  take a peep  at how the US President Donald  Trump is using  the US Supreme  Court as a’ weapon’ to  advance his policies on immigration  in the  American   presidential   system of  politics.

    These  events throw  up  the issues of legitimacy, legality, the rule of  law and the pursuit  of justice in any  political  system  and are  not peculiar  to Nigeria, the UK  and the US. On  each  scenario  however we shall  highlight what  we deem to  be  the mood,  guiding  principle  or motivation.  We  shall  therefore  as in Nigeria’s  case  ask    why the legal  luminaries that  represented the opposition PDP thought  that a presidential  candidate like the incumbent  Nigerian  president can  be disqualified on account of his educational  qualification given his background as an Army General  and someone who had  contested and lost elections for the same office four times in the past . In  Britain we shall see  the implications of mendacity  by  the PM for  Brexit  and the future of  the British  Parliamentary  system. In the US   we  examine  the rancorous  cowboy  politics of  the US President in filling the US Supreme Court with crony  judges  who  give him legal  backing for  his political  agenda and see  how that is affecting US politics consequently. Let me now  dilate  broadly  on these highlighted  situations  in the three nations.

    Of all  the five grounds of  appeal,  by the  PDP  dismissed  by the Election tribunal   it  is the educational qualification that  I  found  most  interesting. How  it got  to be an  issue to disqualify  this particular  candidate  on this   ground  is  simply  unbelievable. It  happened before when legal  luminary GOK Ajayi   brought up  the issue of educational  qualification of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the presidential  election he won  at the time. The  two  events are  similar  but  in the case of President Muhammadu  Buhari I  think it is a  provocative insult  and shows that  the lawyers  for Atiku lack  the erudition they  parade in not seeing the absurdity of a plea for  disqualification  on  lack  of requisite  qualification  of a candidate  who  went to NDA, became a general in the army, was a military  Head of State and had  contested election four times before and lost,  till  he won in 2015 and 2019.

    One  does not need the lengthy judgment that threw  out  the disqualification on account of education given by the tribunal  because simple  common  sense   showed  the buffoonery of  the plea. Indeed  the president deserved exemption from  educational qualification given his military service and the height he reached and not the disgrace of disqualification  based  on his   education  as his opposing   lawyers averred  at  the tribunal. This really  was a lesson in absurdity and a great  mistake  of seeking to make an ass  of the law. I  can recall what Agrippa the judge told Paul of Tarsus  in the bible, ‘Paul, Paul  thou  art mad, thine too  much  learning doth turneth  thee to  madness ‘Really  too much  erudition especially  in the law  can make  lawyers  fall  from the sublime to the ridiculous.

    In  the UK  the rule  of law  is facing   a huge test  over  Brexit  that  is bound  to task  Britain’s  monarchical  democracy  that has hitherto  served it so  brilliantly in providing political  stability. On  occasions like this one can recall  a statement on the beauty of the role of British  monarch  that says –‘ with the Queen in Buckingham Palace every  Briton sleeps well in his bed. ‘This  statement puts absolute trust  of the British in their  monarchy as a bastion of stability and security. Now  if a PM is adjudged  to  have lied to  the Queen, a  charge Boris Johnson  has denied, then  the British  people should have great  cause for  concern  about the workings of their Parliamentary  democracy. But  credibility  is an asset  that  Boris Johnson is losing fast  on Brexit .

    He  has promised that Britain will  leave the EU deal  or no deal by  October 31. But  Parliament last week passed a law prohibiting No  Deal and when asked if he would  implement that he said he would rather  be seen dead in a ditch . But then even though a court in England ruled his prorogation legal, another court in Scotland  has ruled otherwise noting judicially that his  prorogation  was to stymy Parliament and  a higher  court is expected to resolve the legality of the Prorogation presently. Already  the Speaker  who has said he would  leave his post by October 31 has vowed  that  Parliament will  not allow anyone to bypass the laws it has enacted on Brexit. There  is  no doubt  in my mind that Boris Johnson is  going to do  something nasty and illegal  while Parliament is on suspension . The  saying is quite apt here that while  the cat  is away mice would  pay.  Surely the British  PM  knows  his onions  on Brexit but he should be careful  that Brexit , deal or know deal, does not become his political hemlock.

    We  round up with US President Donald  Trump  who  had the backing of the US Supreme Court   this week  in his policy  of reducing the rate of immigration from named nations as well  as from Central  America through its neighbor Mexico. The  US Supreme Court  has ruled to allow  government  to severely limit the ability of migrants to ask  for asylum in the US once they  failed to do so in a transit nation before. Lower  courts have ruled against this before and stopped the Trump policy in its tracks to his  chagrin. Now that Trump  has majority of judges on the Supreme Court, who share his world views on many issues,  he is using the rule of law  to  have his way. While some may accuse him of subverting the   checks  and balances inherent in the   presidential   system  there are those  who  will say that separation of powers does not necessarily preclude symmetry between  the executive and legal  arms of a presidential  system  of  government.  Once again long live the Federal  Republic of Nigeria.

  • Human Rights Commission decries trivialisation of life

    When international human rights organisations and local civil society groups conclude that life is cheap in Nigeria, they are not guilty of exaggeration. With a Human Development Index of 0.532 and a burdensome population of over 200 million people, Nigeria is ranked among the worst countries to live in, and is ranked exceedingly low in Human Capital Index. The cheapness of life, far worse than even poverty, has made living in Nigeria a veritable nightmare. But that cheapness is compounded by governments that can’t tell the difference between good and evil and are therefore unwilling to take the trouble to mend their brutal ways on the one hand, and a people whose diverse and puerile perspectives make them vulnerable to and even complicit in their own brutalisation on the other hand.

    Last Thursday, to the country’s relief, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) surprisingly described the continuing killing of Shiite members by the police as tantamount to making life worthless in Nigeria. The police, like the federal government, have become punitive, excessive, and brutal. In their unending confrontations with Shiite members, particularly the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), the police have not sought any civilised means of riot control. Indeed, to tackle every protest, the police simply wield and use assault rifles, relying less and less on riot gears, truncheons  and tear gas. Inevitably, in every protest, the argument is not about whether any protester was killed but how many were killed.

    Shiites in Nigeria marked their Ashura procession on Tuesday. Days before the procession, the police had warned leaders of the sect that marches were forbidden, and that if the Shiites went ahead to dare the police, they would get their comeuppance. Said the police spokesman, Frank Mba, in response to a question on what the police would do if Shiites insisted on conducting their procession: “What do you want me to say? Let them (Shiites) carry out their procession first, then you would see what the police would do.” The answer was menacing. It was not clear whether the police realised the question was a leading one, the kind of question that tried to probe whether the police and the federal government which banned the IMN in July realised the anomaly, not to say the short-sightedness, of banning an entire religious organisation.

    Though the government later clarified that the Shiite ban was intended only for the IMN, and not the entire Shiite body, they were too muddled up in their thinking to explain how they would be able to differentiate the IMN members, who remain Shiites, from the entire Shia organisation when the sect kick-starts the procession. It turned out, however, that differentiating the Shiites was a luxury the government and its increasingly flagrant police were uninterested in making. To the government, both the IMN and Shiites are coterminous. Indeed, for years, despite a Court of Appeal ruling that nullified the police’s reactionary perception of processions and protests, the police have adamantly stuck to approaching every protest as both unauthorised and a threat to the government. The provisions of the constitution mean nothing.

    Thus when the Shiites, true to their oath, organised their Ashura procession on Tuesday, the government, which had issued threats and equated the Shiites with the IMN, deployed force against the sect. Though the police claimed no one was killed, Shiite spokesmen insisted some 15 of their members were mowed down in cold blood. It was in the context of these alleged killings that the Human Rights Commission deplored the police approach to managing street protests, concluding that life had become inconsequential. Said the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, through a statement signed by the agency’s spokesman, Lambert Oparah, “These acts of extra-judicial killing by the police have made human life inconsequential in Nigeria.”

    Mr Ojukwu is not guilty of hyperbole. By every yardstick, human life has become meaningless in Nigeria. This meaninglessness of life did not, however, begin with this government; it has been a long-running and long-standing curse, regardless of whether it was during military rule or in a democracy. Under the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, for instance, whole communities were razed down by troops under the pretext of smoking out murderers and other criminals. Zaki Biam in Benue State and Odi in Bayelsa State were sacked by troops purporting to look for criminals who murdered some soldiers. Not only was the government’s response unconstitutional, it was also disproportionate. Sadly, national lawmakers and the public were indifferent to the killings and connived at the bloodletting, both arguing that the killing of soldiers was the ultimate defiance of authority which must never be condoned. How the massacre of innocent women, children and the aged amounted to a lawful response seemed to have escaped the public. Nor could anyone prove that sacking whole communities amounted to a sensible deterrent.

    Since the police have embraced the strong-arm tactics of bloodily repressing protests without any censure from the government or the undiscerning public, the gory practice has continued apace. It surprised no one that a few days ago, the police simply came out with guns blazing to battle students of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), killing two students in the process. They claimed no one was shot dead, but students and eyewitnesses argued that the police shot directly at the protesting students. Life indeed remains inconsequential in Nigeria, with many families losing their children and loved ones to needless and brutal police shootings. The brutality continues because the public and their lawmakers approve the tragedy.

    Indeed, the story of Nigeria now is appropriately titled For Whom the Bell Tolls. Fleeing suspects are shot at indiscriminately, with the bullet sometimes hitting innocent passers-by. Law enforcement agents, government officials, magistrates, some of them acting independently, herd innocent people and suspects into overcrowded detention facilities and jails. Unquestioning judges also liberally interpret the laws of the land to help paranoid governments at state and federal levels put citizens needlessly in jail, often for periods exceeding what their alleged crimes indicate in the statutes. It is, therefore, not surprising that the wasting of lives has continued. The conspiracy by the government, an uncritical public, a conniving judiciary, an opaque criminal justice system, unprofessional and homicidal law enforcement agencies, and an unresponsive legislature have all combined to render Nigeria poor, unlivable, inefficient and violent.

    The Human Rights Commission’s unequivocal and censorious statement describing life in Nigeria as inconsequential, though not sufficient to trigger massive change, will hopefully stir the conscience of the country and instigate the people and their lawmakers into courageously attempting to change the climate of fear and repression that has hobbled the development and modernisation of the country. These needless killings must stop. Surely the government has not lost the capacity to feel the pains of grieving families who are burying their loved ones, some of them in their youth, simply because the law enforcement agencies can’t develop a modern crime fighting and crowd management tactics to tackle police deviants and angry citizens. Enough of the bloodletting

  • Car dealer arraigned for ‘defrauding’ customer of N1.7m

    A car dealer, Innocent Odiba, was on Thursday arraigned before a Tinubu Magistrates’ Court, Lagos for allegedly defrauding a customer, Mark Ochigbo, of N1.7 million.

    Odiba, 34, is facing a three-count charge of conspiracy, fraud and theft before Magistrate T.A. Anjorin-Ajose.

    The Prosecutor, Insp. Ajaga Agboko, told the court that the defendant committed the offence sometime in July 2018 at No. 38, Balola Street, Palm Groove, Lagos.

    He said that Odiba conspired with a relative of the complainant to defraud one Ochigbo of N1.7million under the pretence of helping him to buy a car from overseas since 2018.

    Read Also: Son fakes kidnap to defraud dad of N500,000

    Agboko said that whenever Ochigbo asked Odiba of the car, he would inform him that the car was yet to arrive at the Lagos Port.

    He said that a relative of Ochigbo introduced the defendant to him as a car dealer.

    He told the court that since 2018 Odiba could not deliver the car as promised and he also did not return the money.

    Odiba, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

    The Magistrate Anjorin-Ajose, granted the defendant bail in the sum of N500, 000 with two sureties in like sum.

    He adjourned the case until September 19.

  • Landlord, son ‘beat female tenant to coma’ in Anambra

    A lady, Miss Ogochukwu Igwe, was allegedly beaten to coma by her landlord, identified as Obidike in Umudim Nnewi, Nnewi North Local Government Area of Anambra State.

    The victim, a hairdresser, was reportedly beaten up by the suspect, together with his son for asking them to stop using their vehicles to block her salon shop.

    The Nation gathered that trouble ensued when the landlord, on arrival to his house, parked his car in front of the salon, which resulted into a brawl.

    Speaking to newsmen on her hospital bed at Glory hospital and Maternity, the victim alleged that the landlord strangled her after hitting her with the drier in her salon.

    She said, “I pleaded with him to shift the car from blocking my shop but instead of yielding, the landlord told me to pack out of the shop and that he would deal with me when his son returned in the evening.

    “The son later arrived with his tipper, came with his father into my salon and used the drier in my salon to hit me.

    “He held me by the neck and tried to strangled me and I fell down unconscious. The next place I saw myself was at Glory hospital and Maternity,  Umudim Nnewi.”

    Read Also: Conductor charged with beating up policeman

    Ogochukwu said it was after she recovered that she saw a female police officer who introduced herself as Inspector Nneka, the investigating police  officer (IPO), from Central Police Station, Nnewi.

    “She took my statement and told me that Onyeka who beat and tried to strangled me has been arrested but that they were yet to arrest his father.

    “I later learnt that he was granted bail while his father has not been arrested,” she added.

    She appealed to the state commissioner of police, Mr John Abang, to come to her aid by ensuring that the suspects face the wrath of the law.

    The counsel to the victim, Mr Kanayo C. Muoneke, in a petition to the state Commissioner of Police, CP, Mr John Abang made available to newsmen, urged the CP to intervene, adding  that the victim had almost passed away if not for divine interventiom.

    “Presently, the victim can’t conviniently eat because of the injuries sustained and the suspects are celebrating the victim’s fate,” he said.

  • New dawn Eagles

    Nothing excites this writer more than watching young Nigerians grow through the ranks of the beautiful game.

    Although we have wasted several generations of players discovered from the grassroots, it appears we are rediscovering some and playing them during the big games involving the Super Eagles, a trend which is in tandem with FIFA’s goals in inaugurating age-grade competitions. Nigeria needs to catch up with the rest of the world in fielding players who evolved from age-grade teams.

    Looking at the players’ roll call in Dnipro on Monday ahead of the game against Ukraine, I was confident that the Ukrainians would be shocked, given the way their players were running the usual mind-games’ commentaries on what they would do to the Nigerians. Such headlines as ‘ No mercy for Eagles’, ‘We will attack Eagles full force’ etc raised my hopes further, especially as our boys didn’t trade words with them.

    Troost Ekong, Alex Iwobi, Oghenekaro Etebo, Simon Moses, Semi Ajayi, goalkeeper Francis Uzoho, Victor Osimhen, Samuel Chukwueze, Samuel Kalu, Olaoluwa Aina and Jamilu Collins, not forgetting debutants Joseph Aribo of Glasgow Rangers, Scotland, Joshua Maja of Girondins Bordeaux, France, Emmanuel Dennis of Club Brugge, Belgium and Anderson Esiti of PAOK Salonica of Greece represent the future of our Eagles, given the performances of Nigerians in Europe this season. A few others, such as Henry Onyekuru, Wilfred Ndidi, Tyronne Ebuehi, Ikechukwu Ezenwa, Paul Onuachu, Bonaventure Dennis, Kelechi Iheanacho, Anderson Esiti, Chidozie Awaziem, Maduka Okoye and Brian Idowu, need to be encouraged with such big games.

    Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) chieftains should ask coach Gernot Rohr to search for defenders and goalkeepers in the domestic league. This can only happen, if Rohr lives here longer than he does now. Rohr can stay in Nigeria and watch games here weekly. Technology has made it possible for anyone to watch missed games on television – courtesy of the Explora device on DSTV, yet have the same impact on his selection.

    Looking at the team which played in Dnipro on Tuesday, one is tempted to celebrate. What I saw of the players doesn’t look like a fluke. Those boys play weekly for their European clubs and it showed in the way they handled the ball.

    They were very fit, they were faster to the ball than the Ukrainians and they knew what to do with the ball, going forward. I’m sure we would have won the game, if Rohr wasn’t concerned with utilising the six changes available to both coaches during such friendly matches.

    Members of the country’s Olympic Games’ squad, such as Kelechi Nwakali, Taiwo Awoniyi, Azubuike Okechukwu and Effiong Ndifreke, should immediately be drafted to the Super Eagles instead of digging deep into the past to unearth ageing players. Mikel Obi and Odion Ighalo have quit the team honourably. Others, such as  Daniel Akpeyi, Leon Balogun (if he continues to sit on the bench at Brighton), Oguenyi Onazi and, possibly Kenneth Omeruo, should be pulled out honourably through international matches. The average age of most national teams is 22, hence the fast pace of matches.

    Do we have a team for the future? Ukraine’s coach, Coach Andriy Shevchenko, a top international, provided the answer in a post match interview in which he said: ‘’But today’s (Tuesday night’s) game was very important, we received a lot of valuable information.”

    Shevchenko urged his countrymen to applaud the Yellow Men for the pulsating 2-2 draw, pointing out that:”It is very difficult to find the ideal at all. The team is moving in the right direction. It is impossible to compare today’s (Tuesday night’s) match with the previous one against Lithuania.”

    Shevchenko told reporters after the game – Soccernet.ng confirmed – that: “It is a completely different team made up of players who play in different championships. But today’s (Tuesday night’s) game was very important, we received a lot of valuable information.”

    We hope that NFF will secure quality matches for the team to blend. Such games should be held in the country to give Nigerians an opportunity to watch their heroes. Playing matches at home will open a new vista for sports sponsorship since business chiefs will appreciate the marketing windows available to them to connect with the fans, who they could convert to their customers.

    Of course, everything should be done to ensure that the coaches are comfortable and are paid their wages regularly.

    Good luck Nigeria.

    Whither Serena Williams

    The deafening noise from the US Open court’s women singles final, especially with the ouster of the Queen of the courts, Serena Williams, is instructive, even though most of her admirers continue to rue her misfortune on compassionate grounds – expectedly, many have imputed bad luck, age, etc as the reason for the bad days on the courts for cup finals.

    But the truth is that Serena is being beaten by young girls who see her as their heroine. These young girls have modelled their game after Serena’s, with their coaches perfecting plans on how to beat their queen, exploiting her weaknesses, which aren’t known to the American. Not many champions stand the chance of correcting their mistakes during matches. Most times, they are frustrated and it influences the outcome of the matches. Serena’s case shouldn’t be different.

    Any person worried by the trends in anything would definitely be angry and eventually lose focus. This is where Serena has failed. Serena, despite her towering status, hasn’t be able to manage her temperament. If she hopes to conquer the new final game hoodoo, she should work on her mood swings during matches. Serena must learn how to play without being influenced by the fans or be worried about the umpire’s nuisances, including wrong calls. Umpires are humans, prone to mistakes.

    If Serena must break the ‘unforced jinx’, she should sit back at home with her coaches to watch the new girls on the bloc and change her approaches to games. If Serena sticks to her previous strategies, she won’t beat these girls.

    Such changes include improving on her first serves, which are not as potent as they used to be.

    I don’t think Serena’s problem is her age. She should learn to be as calm as cucumber. She should learn to throw her balls a little higher for her first serves. She should deemphasise speed on the serve but placement, which should give her enough time to move briskly towards the net to finish off the serve with killer half volleys or smashes, depending on the height of the returned ball.

    Indeed, Serena’s game management is on the decline. She needs a bit of variation to confound these younger girls who are quicker to the ball. I don’t know if she still reckons with her manager. If she doesn’t, she should quickly get someone she can listen to. Possibly her elder sister Venus, only if she is a coach. With a good coach, she would know if her problems include having to change her grip of the racquet among other plausible reasons.

    Serena’s ability to win these biggest of the big matches was her calling card, a talent that was virtually unmatched by even her most illustrious WTA peers of the past. From 1999 to 2015, Serena went 21-4 in major finals. Two of those losses came to her sister Venus and another to Maria Sharapova. Serena was so incensed by the latter defeat that she’s still avenging it 15 years later.

    Serena would need to overcome this psychological problems associated with her recent final matches. She could possibly sit with her elder sister Venus to review her game and chart a new course to surpass the record on her sight. It is achievable only if Serena accepts that the present predicament is hers to resolve.

    Arsenal’s axe indeed

    Driving through Gbagada Road’s traffic occasioned by the ongoing construction  to increase the height of the road’s median, I noticed one guy carrying a sign board, which read “Arsenal’s axe”. I was curious and consequently changed my lane in the gridlock to have a closer look at that what the guy was saying.

    Surprise. This hawker was wearing an old, tattered Liverpool shirt, but my focus was on what he wrote. I didn’t see him carrying any load to suggest that he kept the axes inside the bags. Rather, I saw a sign which signifies any product produced by Nike.

    What was this sign?  Nike’s usual “good” sign. I couldn’t find any correlation with the good sign and axes. I also couldn’t reconcile how Arsenal’s “guns” could suddenly become “axes”. Equally laughable was the fact that the hawker wore a Liverpool top. Don’t ask me if there were no security operatives.

    The gridlock suddenly eased, allowing for quicker vehicular movement, hence I zoomed off, leaving the man (God forgive me, because the hawker looked like a lunatic), to walk in the opposite direction. I just hope he truly didn’t have axes with him.

  • Judiciary as political umpire?

    It was the National Chairman of the defunct National Party of Nigeria (NPN), Chief Meredith Adisa Akinloye, who famously declared in the run up to the 1983 general elections that there were only two political parties in Nigeria – the NPN and the military. The opposition political parties took umbrage at Akinloye’s explosive assertion. They interpreted it as implying that the ruling NPN would prefer the military coming back to power than losing at the polls. Yet, there was an element of truth in Akinloye’s thesis. The military, which had only recently quit the political stage in 1979 after 13 years of praetorian rule, was still a potent political force waiting in ill-disguised impatience, to hijack power, once again, not just from the NPN as assumed by Akinloye, but from the political class as a whole. And this is exactly what happened with the military coup of December, 1983, that sacked the Second Republic.

    The politicians, seemingly oblivious of the existential danger they faced as a ruling power elite, continued to approach competition for power as a desperate do – or die affair, until the military crept into the political household like the proverbial thief in the night. The country was to remain under the jackboots of military authoritarianism until the onset of this political dispensation in 1999 after the forced exit from the political terrain of the men in uniform.

    Despite the last two decades of unbroken civilian rule since 1999, it is evident that not much has changed as regards the tendency of the political class to pursue the acquisition of political power with such fierceness and utter absence of restraint that perennially threatens not just democracy but the stability and very existence of the polity as a whole. Yes, unceasing quarrels, disagreements and disputes among factions and fractions of the political class are inherent and indispensable features of the democratic process. But these must always be conducted within the boundaries of the ‘constitutive and regulative’ rules of the game if they are not to become dysfunctional to the system.

    In the absence, for instance, of a largely coherent and credible entity like the military able to intervene as in the past when democratic rule experiences systemic breakdown, persistently disruptive behavior on the part of the political class is more likely to result in generalized descent to anarchy with devastating consequences within and beyond Nigeria if such an entity as we know it survives as a cohesive whole.

    This is why it is so sad that the proclivity of Nigeria’s political class towards political self-immolation, which had brought the polity to grief so many times in the past, continued to be evident before, during and after the 2019 elections. The violence that marred the elections at several polling centres in many states was only an indication of the ferociousness of the power struggle. With the conclusion of the elections and the announcement of winners and losers at various levels, the battle only shifted in most cases from the electoral to the judicial front.

    The depth of desperation of political actors in the quest to win or retain power at all costs was again poignantly exhibited in some of the extremist submissions both of the petitioners, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the PDP on the one hand and the respondents, President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC on the other, in the presidential election dispute resolved in favour of Buhari on Wednesday. For instance, Atiku did not only want the court to pronounce on the integrity and plausibility of the 2019 election results as pronounced by INEC, he sought to convince the court that Buhari was unqualified to contest the election in the first place because he allegedly lacked the constitutionally stipulated educational requirements.

    Of course, the court was, unsurprisingly, not persuaded. Here is a man who had not only risen to the apex of Nigeria’s military as a General; he is a former Head-of-State and Commander-In-Chief of the country’s Armed Forces. Furthermore, he had contested for the country’s presidency on four previous occasions amassing substantial votes on all occasions. Had Atiku’s submission been upheld by the court, Buhari’s election would have been annulled and the PDP candidate declared winner even though he lost the election by a margin of no less than four million votes! That would have been a veritable judicial coup.

    But then, the Buhari camp was also uncharitable and provocative in contesting Atiku’s claims partly on the grounds that the PDP candidate is not a Nigerian by birth. It is laudable that the court did not find the reasons adduced for this submission plausible and thus dismissed it. Again, here is an Atiku who rose to the top hierarchy of the Nigeria Customs Service from where he retired to pursue his career in business and politics for over three decades now. He was a former Vice-President of Nigeria for eight years and after that had contested for the country’s presidency on two occasions.

    These kinds of submissions by both Atiku and Buhari, had they been upheld by the courts would have eposed Nigeria to global ridicule and generated severe tensions and conflicts in the polity. It is important that members of the political elite cultivate the discipline to look beyond their immediate personal interests in the pursuit of their ambitions and also consider the stability, peace and cohesion of the polity. For, a country must first exist before political offices can be meaningfully competed for.

    Does this mean that aggrieved contestants and parties in elections must sacrifice the pursuit of justice in the interest of peace? No. The latter will surely always ultimately be a function of the former. But has Atiku really been denied justice in this instance as claimed by the PDP in its rather provocative reaction to Wednesday’s verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC)? It is difficult to agree with the PDP. Luckily, the PEPC’s judgement was not delivered in the cloistered closet of the court. The 8-hour marathon judgement was broadcast live on national television for the public to follow. In my view, the jurists were painstaking and rigorous in their submissions even though the Supreme Court will have the last say on the matter.

    Atiku and the PDP claim on the one hand that the elections were marred by large scale violence and intimidation of voters by security agents, over voting, manipulations, alterations and subtraction of valid votes given to Atiku by Nigerians all of which resulted in Buhari’s victory as declared by INEC. But it claims, on the other hand, that this allegedly perverted and grossly manipulated process by electoral and security agencies, working in concert with the APC, also strangely resulted in Atiku’s victory according to results the party claims to have obtained from an INEC server that it failed to convince the courts exists.

    This is an irreconcilable contradiction. How did these alleged gross irregularities not stop the PDP’s victory in the 17 states and the Federal Capital Victory which it won in the 23rd Februray, 2019, presidential election in contrast to the APC’s victory in 19 states. The truth is that it was a closely fought and largely credible election whatever its shortcomings.

    But then, this is not just a problem peculiar to Atiku and the PDP. It is a question of an entrenched political culture in which contestants for political office do not accept the outcome of elections and always resort to litigation no matter how glaring their defeat at the polls. After all, Buhari also resorted to seeking judicial intervention up to the Supreme Court on the three occasions that he lost the presidential election until his victory on the fourth attempt. His 2015 election triumph, however, shows that Buhari’s previous losses could be attributed not just to electoral malpractices but also the limitations of his political platforms and his lack of a pan-Nigerian appeal on those occasions.

    Yes, aggrieved contestants for political office have the right to seek redress exploiting all constitutionally stipulated avenues to do so in the accordance with democratic tenets. In fact, we have had several badly rigged executive and legislative elections upturned especially since 2007 thus strengthening both democracy and the judicial process in Nigeria. But when contesting the outcome of elections in court becomes the norm rather than the exception when elections have been demonstrably rigged, it becomes a distracting, enervating and dysfunctional practice.

    To strengthen public confidence in the electoral process and thus reduce the justification for reflexive resort to the courts by losers in elections, the National Assembly should improve on the Electoral Act passed by the 8th Assembly but which was rejected by the President and ensure that this time around it is passed into law.