Sam Omatseye

NEWS reports often suggest apocalypse looms over Nigeria. But recently under the romantic afterglow of Valentine’s Day, in oil-rich Uyo, the nation veered to a fest, if for a day.  Away from the blood-spattered turmoil of Boko Haram, the quicksand of kidnappers, the brutal hours of the herdsman and the partisan partitions of our politics, Akwa Ibom presented a nation of ethno-religious balm.

For a nation where deaths and funerals contort every narrative of conciliation, something gave us a paradox of good news: death.

Udom Emmanuel, the state Governor, lost his father, Elder Gabriel Emmanuel Nkanang. He invited his country men and women to bid him farewell. They came from the north, from the east, and from the west. Elder Emmanuel was like the Biblical corn of wheat of that falls to the ground and dies. So he does not abide alone. Hence in attendance were the high and mighty men who hold the key to death and prosperity of this nation. While the event lasted, everyone forgot our acrimonies.

It was not a Vladimir Nabokov’s invitation to a beheading. It was the beauty that came out of a death. As Christ said, where the body is, there shall the eagles gather. They gathered in Uyo. It was like the metaphor of Samson, who saw the remains of a lion as a sign of wellbeing. “Out of the eater came forth meat. Out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Honey flowed out of a moment of human passing. Death was not proud. It did not triumph. It coalesced the good of the national soul, away from the hurly-burly of tribe and faith. That was what we witnessed at the funeral of Elder Emmanuel.

At the service, as if for a metaphor, a pastor was giving his sermon, and the Emir of Kano, His Royal Highness Muhammadu Sanusi II, glided in. All his Islamic grandeur and Fulani royalty composed themselves for the Christian obsequies. At that moment, it was not about whose God was true, whose land was whose, it was about peace with a fellow man, who lost his dear father. There was no herdsman, no gunshot. No sword but just the word.

Imagine that the same upstart former governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose, chastened his own dramatics. He who just dismissed the speculation that he would not decamp to the APC, described the party as “coronavirus infected.” The same man shook hands with an APC henchman and Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, at the  event. A coronavirus-infested handshake? And also with Fayemi?

We saw former President Goodluck Jonathan swathed in supine smile and sitting with the Owu Chief, two men who sparred not sweetly over the years. Yet, they could share their banter. And the Owu chief who has sparred with the APC-run federal government also spared a handshake with the Vice president. The hand this time was not for ripping party cards. No battle there, no ribbing of Aso Rock  for ridding us of appointments. No verbal combats over an economy adrift, or over elections.

We also saw the southwest motif. Governor Kayode Fayemi, who had a near-mortal fight with Fayose, softened for chummy moments. Fayemi tossed Fayose’s candidate in the last governor polls, but at that funeral, they buried their malice.

Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal embraced Fayemi, even though both are leaders of their APC governors’ caucuses, Tambuwal having ascended the mantle as the chairman of PDP Governors forum. Fayemi takes charge of all governors’ canvas.

They didn’t spar over the new turn in Bayelsa State. Governor Douye Diri (Double D) was less than 24 hours in the saddle but No APC chieftain recoiled from him, not Osinbajo, not Senate president Ahmed Lawan. Speaking of Tambuwal, he chummed with Niger State Governor Sani Bello, even if the latter had to log in hours in a trip to Sokoto in the stormy days prior to the 2015 sweepstakes. He wanted to dissuade Tambuwal from defecting to the PDP. But Bello did not begrudge Tambuwal, neither did Tambuwal him. Uche Secondus who protested the Imo twist at the court must have shared a wink or two with the Niger fellow. Attahiru Bafarawa for all his fights for gubernatorial supremacy did not have to nudge Tambuwal except in the spirit of bonhomie. They could save a fight for another day. Maybe that day would not come. If and when it came, they may, as politics goes, be on the same team.

The combative Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike, reserved his voice of scratchy sonority for condolences and congratulations, even if a few days earlier he baited the APC chairman and warrior Adams Oshiomhole. Wike must, however, have relished meeting with Godwin Obaseki, the Edo State Governor, over their mutual unease with Adams, especially how Obaseki has turned Edo State into a sort of tempest over his fear of the former labour leader and his mentor and kingmaker. There might have been whispers, but the optics of that day was for peace, but not for what folks from Warri, not far away, call jiga belle, that is malice. It did not matter that Obaseki had jiga belle for Onanefe Ibori, former Delta State governor, a Warri boy who knows the meaning of jiga belle beyond the proper English translation. Obaseki would revoke Ibori’s Certificate of Occupancy, which shows that the Edo Governor did not carry the spirit of Elder Emmanuel back with him to the state house where he wielded an ominous signature.

Of course, Bukola Saraki, aka Eleyinmi, was there with his successor, Lawan. This was no time for tussle over legislative legacy. Forget the battle over mace. Forget the loss of the polls in kwara State and all its otoge reverberations. Woe unto anyone who reminded him that he wanted badly to return as PDP caucus leader and president of the Senate and chief of National Assembly. A day like Elder Emmanuel’s funeral was to bury divisions and not praise party loyalty.  No party daggers drawn, no looks of deferred fights.

Even the president, the APC chief of chiefs, though not present, sent a note to Governor Emmanuel about his father: “As a fulfilled man, he not only raised a son but a leader.”

Local politics, which can be intense in Akwa Ibom, witnessed its balmy hand as its patriarch Obong Victor Attah, materialized. He was on the other side in the 2015 polls as an APC man. His presence was unmistakable. So was former first lady and wife of former governor Godswill Akpabio. Ekaette’s presence caused a happy stir.  So Governor Udom Emmanuel did not preside over a funeral like we see in Scott F. Fitzgerald’s classic The Great Gatsby where only strangers showed up.

Fashion statements had their berth. With Enugu State Governor, Ugwuanyi’s cap, and Ipkeazu’s perpetual advertisement of made-in-Aba, in the Owu chiefs florid white, and Jonathan’s vintage Niger Delta tunic, Or Ayade’s parted hair, or is it the parade of northern caps, the fortitude of shoes and, of course, the Emir of kano in the showy dignity of his regalia.

It was no day to bicker over the virtues of Amotekun, the manipulative vices of Kanu and his Biafra, or the pooh-poohing of its counterpart in the north, to bemoan Leah or beheaded priests. It was no day to think division, it was a day for peace and feasting.

For the day, it was not north or south, or east or west, it was a single nation united by the grief of one of their own. As he welcomed his guests, Governor Udom’s heart must have hummed with the words of the Prophet Ezekiel: “I accept you all as fragrant incense.”

That is the true smell of Nigeria. It was for Elder Emmanuel. It was for all of us.

Fashola’s university idea

AT Ife in the 1980’s I attended an event in which Prof Soyinka lamented the loss of what he designated the university idea.

He said it was not in the erection of brick and mortar alone that neglected the beauty of nature.

Today, ironically, years of neglect in the institutions call for infrastructure revival.

The Trojan of works, Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN will be handing over internal road projects to vice chancellors in 18 federal universities between now and March. See l, a lot adds up to the university idea.

Good roads are integral to its definition.

By Sam Omatseye

It is difficult to predict what historians will say of this age. Will they say it is the age of the politician, in which case they would say we should not blame the law, and that the law was only at their beck and call? Not their muse, but their mule.

Shall we say it is an age of the law, in which the merchants of technicality take precedence over the spirit? Or shall we applaud the cunning and fervour of the justices, for making themselves the definers of the people’s choice because the people cannot decide for themselves? Shall we say, this trinity is the albatross of democracy? Or shall we conclude that we have never had a democracy but a sham in glorious frock, and we have more of a republic than democracy, by which we mean we have handed over the will of the people to a coterie of individuals?

That is what the democracy by courts has shed on us all. I call it courtocracy, which is a government of the people for the judges and by the judges. Lincoln would wince in his grave because a certain country in the depth of Africa has sniffed at his definition of democracy as the government of the people, for the people and by the people. The former United States president prayed that it should not “perish from the earth.” We should pray that we are able to revive it from what seems to be a mortal mockery into which the Supreme Court is turning political justice.

It is not whether PDP should not be happy today that it won the seat of governor back after the Odili-led verdict. It is whether APC should have rejoiced in Kogi States about four years ago when Yahaya Bello climbed the throne alone. The courts did not say his was not a joint ticket then. Now, the Supreme Court imposes its intelligence that David Lyon cannot go it alone. Maybe the courts saw the deputy of Yahaya Bello then. We didn’t. We were blind like the Justice maiden. The deputy was a spirit, without flesh, blood and bones then. He materialised later when Bello eventually picked him. The justices saw the spirit of the law when we were looking for the flesh of the deputy beside Bello.

Was it not the same Supreme Court that ruled once, in the case of Rotimi Amaechi vs Omeihe, that voters did not cast their lots for individuals on the ticket but for political parties? So, if that is the case, why was it possible for Audu to die and Faleke not take over as governor in Kogi State? It was Audu who died and not the APC. Audu was not on the ballot box as the court ruled in the Rivers State saga. Why couldn’t the Supreme Court have nullified the inconclusiveness of the election by INEC and declared Faleke governor with his spirit of a deputy? After all, Audu, being dead, was now spirit. And only a spirit could have taken over from a spirit as in the case of Bello later.

Going back, did we not remember the story of Atiku Abubakar who was thrust to the high seat of vice president by the Owu Chief? And had he not won the seat of governor at Adamawa State? Did his deputy, Boni Haruna, not joyfully and without a scent of controversy take over?

So, if it’s a case of a spiritual Supreme Court, we can forgive them for seeing the spirit of Bello’s deputy in Kogi. Did it now go carnal in the case of David Lyon? They did not only see the flesh, they also saw the sins of the deputy.

Now, we cannot in any way excuse the sloppiness of the APC screening committee that did not see that one person had a different name in primary school, another in secondary school, another in the university and another as a politician. This serial self-naming could have raised highbrows. A harlot of self-identity cannot be ordinary. The man got away with it in the senate, so he and his backers thought he could get away with it again. They probably thought they could get away with the impunity the Nigerian style? This time it is a story of “cunning man die, cunning man bury am.” A crooked politician often knows the crookedness of his rival. If you don’t watch your back, you will fall. David Lyon will probably be lamenting the woes brought on him by the footloose plotting of his party. In pidgin English, we say, “e take his own take spoil my own.” Unlike Lot’s wife, the deputy didn’t turn into a pillar of salt. He didn’t look back but forward to perdition.

Diri now wears the crown, and in this climate the PDP is reaping where it did not sow. It is just like Kogi in APC.

Some observers also think if Lyon’s deputy had his papers right, the judges might have found some other excuse to give it away to the PDP. That is how the Supreme Court is suspected by many in the Nigerian civil society.

In Bayelsa, all the votes that went to APC were cast by the people, unless there is evidence to the contrary. That has not been asserted, so we take it for granted that all those votes that went to Lyon came from the people. They saw Diri before they cast it for Lyon. Now, because of a candidate’s carelessness, the minority becomes the majority. This calls to mind the poem by Bertolt Brecht, asking us whether we should dissolve the people and elect another one? The courts dissolved the people who cast the majority votes. That is why democracy itself was overtaken by the republic, but not in the classic definition of the republic, which consists in representatives.

The Supreme Court is playing a balancing act, a verdict for APC here, another for PDP there. One to Imo State, the other to Bayelsa State. If that’s the case, it is not balancing, it is pandering. Justice in this light is mere judgment

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In this case, the people vote, the justices decide. Some have asserted that sometimes it depends on what sort of justices are empaneled for a case. It does not matter the merit. That is dangerous. Some say that is why quite a few justices have been de-benched. We go into the territory of corruption.

That accounted for why some have argued that the Supreme Court is playing a balancing act, a verdict for APC here, another for PDP there. One to Imo State, the other to Bayelsa State. If that’s the case, it is not balancing, it is pandering. Justice in this light is mere judgment. It makes the Supreme Court not a place for final judgment, but judgment finale. It is the last act as ritual, not as justice. It becomes a temple of law, not a cathedral of justice.  After all, as this essayist has noted before, Thoreau lamented that “the law never made anyone a whit more just.”

It is often asserted that the court is no father Christmas. It is sometimes an excuse by justices to deny a society justice. The late Gani Fawehinmi knew this, hence he told me once that if there is a case between a rich and poor man, he would find the law for the poor. The law is often a blank slate, and it depends on who is reading and interpreting it. A good judge will turn it to social justice, and another to a tyrannical cause. They should observe what Jesus said about lawyers who have taken away the key of knowledge. They would not open the door to enter and would not let the people in. That is why justice and the law are at the mercy of the courts.

Sam Omatseye

TWO anecdotes will do for a start. One, a personal encounter; the other an ex-governor’s lesson. I drove to an elderly person’s residence around Ogba in Lagos State, and parked across the street. I peered through my rearview mirror into a quiescent street. No car whirring towards me, no okada blaring. It was safe to open the door and step out. No it wasn’t.  The door ajar and before my left shoulder moved, my car vibrated. The driver’s door creaked and snapped at the hinges. I stiffened with knowledge.

A contraption had jumped over from the car door.  A motorcycle flying one way and two humans the other. It was a nightmare at noon, a humourless movie unfurling before me. My eyes devoured the scene without understanding it. Gradually as though a mist was clearing, I recognised a woman, a passenger, unable to rise from the ground. Between her chest and waist was a threat to my sense of peace: she looked pregnant. I hoped it was a biological disorder, a potbelly of sorts, a protuberance from an earlier birth, etc. I saw her before I heard her.

“What did I do to you?” she mumbled, tears coursing down her face. “Did they send you to me? I don’t know you. Do you want to kill him,” her hand pointing to her stomach area, and I knew she was pregnant and accusing me of wizardry at the same time. She was injured and bleeding. The okada rider was also on the ground, his feet also bleeding.

In a few minutes, the rearview mirror’s silent street had buzzed into a cacophony of okadas, and they surrounded me and my host who had seen the chaos. The two victims were taken in my car to a hospital. I was thankful that no one died, but the two suffered severe injuries. I picked up the bills. I became a hostage of the okada riders who thought this haughty, cold-blooded big man might manouevre an escape, and entrap the victims with the hospital costs. I did not only pay the bills for the day, I ended up monitoring and footing the bills of the pregnant woman until she was delivered of her baby. I was thankful she was past miscarriage, and both mother and child survived the noon of agony and mishap.

I also had to finance the okada rider’s livelihood and his family until he left the hospital. And I also provided the money to get a new machine, the accident having “allegedly” put his source of livelihood out of commission. In all, my gratitude was that a rugged act of commerce did not frog-march me to the court for manslaughter, especially charged with a foetal fatality. You can imagine the superstitious malignity of a stranger sent from the village by wicked in-laws to waylay an innocent woman in the city.

The other story was told by an ex-governor in the Niger Delta, who introduced Okada. He thought the banning was a conspiracy of elitist douches who did not care for the poor.  But before long, intelligence reached him that most of the riders did not know their ways around, and that the passengers had to direct the pilot. The reason? They came from Boko Haram country. The governor now had to ease them out quietly without giving reasons in order not to scare his fellow citizens. A policy for the masses was now becoming a trapdoor of mass deaths.  The second anecdote recalls a recent incident in the Southeast where the army arrested at about 3am dozens of red-blooded boys in a convoy heading from the north and identified as Boko H- aram recruits.

While many may gripe that the restriction on okadas may be anti-poor, they should realise that most of the victims of okada have been the poor. Okada itself was an accident. No one plotted for it. I recalled a visit to Uyo in the early days of Akwa Ibom, and I baffled that it was a means of mass transportation. Gradually, it infected the country, from city to city, until it hit the megacity. The humble taxis that took care of movement dissolved and were replaced by elite “drops” and car hires. In a sense, okada elitised transportation. We could also argue that a few other factors brought it here. One, infrastructure deficit. Two, fewer buses. Three, a teeming population. All of these point to a poor policy, especially during the military. Okadas are a military legacy. One of the scars from the era.

But the issue is clear. These motorcycles do not belong to mass transit in a megacity. They are not part of a modern world. It is a backward policy to have them in an age where mass transit and highways define the nerve centres.

The BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, decided that it was not to cover the whole city. But the major arteries have to be protected from the menace.  Again, it all started with the then governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, who spent resources impressing it upon Lagosians that okadas did not enhance the city. It was a source of crime, and a harbinger of deaths. He unveiled reams of films telling of ghastly sights of accident victims in the city.

It is easy to blame it as a dig at the poor. The rich and car owners have had to use it too, especially when enmeshed in go-slow. Some use it when trying to catch their flights. Such moments will haunt car owners, too. But we are either a modern city or a surrender to the past. Accepting okadas and Keke NAPEPS is a caving in to underdevelopment. It subverts a ride of progress to the future. It is what former U.S. President George W. Bush calls “the soft bigotry of low expectation.”  Okada does not belong to the future. As a sportswear says, “The future is coming, go forth.”

Okada, in this age, pays ‘lips service’ to modern transport. Some have said the riders can be registered and organised, and that would help. The organised ones were like the rugged, ragged riders we loath.  The only difference was that they had a corporate identity. They were as much ruthless in speed and manoeuvres in narrow and broad streets.

In modern societies, the motorcycle is for dispatch services, and at that often well-organised. The other use is for recreation, the Harley Davidson culture. It also fits into the alternative society of rugged men and women riding on highways. Their machines feed the egos of muscle men with their throaty roars and vibrations. The machines are big, turbo-charged, with tyres like biceps.

But here it is about Naira and deaths. Some of the riders left their normal jobs and thought okada a money spinner. They did not contemplate its odds and ends. The Governor has rolled out buses and more are coming. Work is on with infrastructure. It is one thing for the people to move in a city. It is quite more important to be safe while doing it. Okada is not like the autobiographical fiction titled: Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, in which a ride is not rough-and-tumble but a tranquil rumination on life. You cannot focus on peace in an okada the way you can in a bus.

Sultan and Plateau day of forgiveness

THE Sultan of Sokoto hit the bull’s eye in Jos last weekend at what is described as a day of forgiveness in Plateau State, the second year since Governor Simon Lalong set it in motion.

In the spirit of the day, the Sultan Abubakar Saad III, warned against the media war of recrimination between Christians and Muslims over the sectarian killings in the country. It is time we focused the blame where it belongs: the incompetence of the security forces.

It is not whether we weaponise hate between faiths but whether the killings stop. We cannot stop them on the pages of newspapers or through social media maelstrom. Billions go to the army in the budget to stop the killings, including Boko Haram, yet we see the country falling to the bloody spasms.

A pastor that riles its followers does not help the cause of peace or Christ, neither does the Muslim cleric with messianic bile.

The president did a good thing to write for Christianity Today, a respected journal in the United States. But those who wrote it for the president should have understood that it did not help the president to bandy statistics on what percentage of Muslims died in the hands of Boko Haram.

How did they arrive at 90 percent in a country where no statistics is sacred? The article backed its context with anecdotes about Chibok girls and other Boko Haram raids as though they amount to any scientific data.

It was enough to say both Christians and Muslims have been victims. The article however was, for most part, well-worded and brilliant. Next time, his advisers should let more balanced inputs before publication.

By Sam Omatseye

After blood is shed, we shed tears in vain. But tears take a journey of their own, leaking through our pores and twisting down our faces with cheeky authority. This happened in Plateau State recently on a night where herdsmen came for cowardly plunder.

Parents cried, children cowered, whole villages mourned and wives watched widowhood fall upon them as their husbands expired in the sultry omen of their blood. Tragedy, especially of this sort, does not flash a signal. It relishes an impunity of arrival. It has not for a long while in Plateau, where the people were getting used to a strange berth called peace. Until the recent gruesome episodes, the residents regaled themselves to their own narratives of tranquility. But with their secret joy tortured, they thought in the words of the poet Walt Whitman, “something startled where I thought I was safest.”

Such a tragedy is better as an omen than as fait accompli. In either case, though, such a tragedy first humiliates and later paralyses. Marauders crush the cheekbones of towns, and families crumble. They are not human beings. They are beasts. At best, they are parodies of homo sapiens. Many of us grew up associating the word butcher with men whose biceps swing knives at cringing cows. They were the harbingers of pomo and shaki and bokoto: the choice parts of the bovine creature.

Butchery promised parties and burps from happy bellies. Today, it is a branch of the human family known as herdsmen who know nowhere for knife blades or gun nozzles but the human body. The word slaughter was never meant for human beings. Now they are. As a metaphor it has lost its innocence just like we humans. The herdsmen target humans who sound differently and say yes and amen to another god. To them, hell is other people, apologies to French writer Jean Paul Sartre.

The herdsmen are known there to be minorities in the place. They may not have numbers but they overwhelm through stealth onslaughts. They have no heritage, or rights or memorials in Plateau. But they want to build memories into memorials – the dark, blood-stained memories of boys, girls, mothers and fathers put to death, the remembrances of loved ones cut down in their homes.

The killers don’t live in Plateau. That was what riled Governor Simon Bako Lalong at a town hall meeting where he ordered the police to fish out the killers. But he knows their collaborators are locals. “How can they say that people killed and there is no arrest,” he asked incredulously. “Are those killing others spirits? I don’t think you can kill 15 human beings and claim you are spirits and there is no arrest. Police, you should take the community leaders and the Ardos with you so that they can tell you those behind the killings.”

It is the first ever time the Ardos will be so browbeaten in public. Ardos are the Fulani community leaders. The rage of the governor paid off, and some Ardos and other community leaders have been taken away for questioning. They have been taken to Abuja for grilling. The governor, who is also the chairman of the Northern Governors Forum, also warned that kidnappers are lurking into the state to operate.

The governor’s charge exposed one of the great points about fighting terror of the bands of butchers? The first weapon we need is intelligence. It means the communities know who the killers are. Indigenes suspect the leaders of the Fulani in the state. They believe the killers are no strangers to the Ardos. If the Ardos know them, it means they had tips about the boys of plunder. They knew they were coming. They saw the shadow of the goons. They knew some locals would die. They did nothing. It means they were maniacal accomplices. It means they have blood in their conniving fingers. If the investigators determine this, it is a critical first step in stopping the murderous spasms.

The killers don’t live in Plateau. That was what riled Governor Simon Bako Lalong at a town hall meeting where he ordered the police to fish out the killers. But he knows their collaborators are locals

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We hope that Abuja will not fail Jos, and the security forces will not cow to considerations that undermine and unvarnished analysis of who the demons are. The tension between the settlers and indigenes led the governor to draw up a template for communal interactions and conflict resolutions. It has worked for years, with occasional infractions. The recent orgy reflected a breakdown. Hence the governor’s anger.

A few days back, governors from neighbouring states, including Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State and Atiku Bagudu of Jigawa State paid a visit to Governor Lalong to show solidarity. But it was more of a gesture of sympathy and cooperation. Representatives of the Nigerian Governors Forum and the Northern Governors Forum also were present.

The meeting can also be tied to two developments. First is the belief that the bands of murderers came from neighbouring states. Two, that the governor had said kidnappers were crossing into the state for mischief. It brings to mind what Governor Lalong himself said about community policing. But community policing can manifest in any dimension depending on its conceptualising.

We can have community policing to cover a neighbourhood of a few streets. It can oversee a state, or even a community of states. It was reported recently, for instance, that the northern governors were contemplating its version of Amotekun, which is also a sort of community policing. The militants are, by their own barbarism and bloodlust, helping to evangelise Amotekun.

As it stands in Plateau, so it should in the country at large. We cannot leave the enforcement of peace in the hands of a governor alone. It must be a shared responsibility.  The issue of Plateau is baffling. Some of the disagreements arise from the rustling of cows and destruction of farms. These tensions should have been resolved by referring grievances to the councils set up for local peace and harmony. Some of them decided that bloodshed topples reconciliation. That is at the root of the mayhem. It is an instinct for human evisceration, which is hard to associate with even animals.

Animals kill for motives, some for food, some to protect territories because animals cannot build reconciliation committees. Lions piss to draw up their borders. Humans have the facility for reason and even for temper control. When humans plunder like the herdsmen have done, they do it for no other reason than that they can. Such acts are associated with Iago, one of Shakespeare’s enduring characters. He is a plunderer. The Shakespeare critic and poet Samuel Coleridge describes such acts as “motiveless malignity.” The militants kill not out of reason or clear human profit. They are creatures of base instinct. They are benighted, distorted souls.

But they are not spirits. They have blood, flesh and bones like all of us. The difference is that they want others not to occupy space but graves. Governor Lalong has other ideas. Ditto all those who belong to civilisation. If they would not let decent beings occupy space, then they have no place here.