Hardball

The Nation, of March 20, reported a rather odd story, headlined “I single out clergymen for attacks after my ugly experience with gay reverend father.”

It is the odyssey — criminal if you wish — of Frederick Ugah, a car-snatching suspect, described in the report, per the Police, as “a notorious criminal who specializes in tormenting priests and imams only.”

Bola Longe, the Nasarawa State Commissioner of Police, who paraded Ugah, declared: “He steals from them at gunpoint and snatch their cars.”

But Ugah, rebellious and unrepentant, fired right back: “I have no regret for my actions. What I want the police to do is look into the problem I had in Abuja and Kaduna, which led to the priest kicking me out of the parish.” Intriguing stuff!

Crime and punishment should be open and close. You do the crime, you do the time, so long as it’s all a product of judicial due process. Hardball doesn’t wish to contest that process. Not for Ugah. Not for anyone else.

But the suspect’s appeal to the police, to tie back stuff to how it all started, appears rather intriguing, if not outright inviting. No — not to mitigate Ugah’s alleged crime. But to beam fair light on his driving motives.

Such could expose a probable case of mental health, driven by felt past emotional injuries. Such trajectory would not only help crack the crime, but also close the cycle of past bitterness, which may yet lead to future crimes.

Ugah claimed his victim — a Catholic priest he once lived under as foster-son — tried to sexually abuse him. After Ugah’s rejection of the priest’s alleged advances, the reverend father allegedly made up stories of phantom fraud against the boy; and allegedly poisoned the mind of every priest in the parish against him.

“My life had been to serve reverend fathers. I washed their clothes, cooked for them and served as their altar boy, while they helped to sponsor my education.”

His priestly master’s sacred lies, Ugah claimed, led to his expulsion from his teen-youth haven — haven, because Ugah was a complete orphan, who had lost both parents very early in life; and his parish homes: first, in Abuja; then, in Kaduna State, were the only home he knew.

But worse: Ugah’s expulsion doomed an otherwise promising future. The resultant financial cut-off shredded his university programme. He ended up a university dropout: a Year 4 Law student, at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), forced to drop his studies. Seven years later, a putative lawyer had settled into a routine life of crime — making priests and Imams his criminal “niche”!

“I took the key to the car in his absence,” Ugah claimed, stressing his familiarity with his victim; and insisting he never put a gun to his head to snatch the car, “because I lived with him before.”

This rather intriguing backgrounding hardly justifies Ugah’s choice of crime. That is a personal choice, which the law is loath to overlook.

But probing the genesis offers the prospect of not only bringing the priest to account (if the allegations prove true) but also treating a troubled citizen of possible mental health, even if the law must throw a criminal into the can.

Hardball

Biafra fever is spreading. Ex-Niger Delta militant Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo has caught the fever. He is the leader of the new “Biafra de facto customary government,” according to a statement issued by its Head of Information and Communication, Uche Mefor.

Dokubo was quoted as saying, “I also call on Biafrans in the various provinces of the Biafra nations in Aba, Abakaliki, Anang, Awka, Calabar, Degema, Eket, Nsukka, Ogoja, Oji River, Okigwe, Onitsha, Opobo, Orlu, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Umuahia, Uyo and Yenagoa province.

“We are going to proceed to set up provincial structures of government starting with provincial assemblies and provincial governance and administrators.

“Let nobody be mistaking that a Biafra will be worse than Nigeria. There is nothing that will be worse than what we are facing today in Nigeria.”

It is unclear how the new pro-Biafra organisation included territories in its map of Biafra, citing “injustice and marginalisation.” Voices from the Ikwerre Peoples Congress (IPC), the Southsouth Elders’ Forum (SEF), the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), the Ibibio Youth Council (iYC), Ijaw Youths Council (IYC) Worldwide, and Order of Egbesu Brotherhood, have opposed the inclusion of certain territories. Dokubo, according to these opposers, “does not have the right, authority, permission and or legitimacy to speak” on behalf of their territories.

The announcement of the new pro-Biafra organisation showed that the secessionist project was still on course.   In 2015, The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), founded in 1999, was renamed Biafra Independence Movement (BIM), and Ralph Uwazuruike said he should be recognised as BIM leader instead of MASSOB leader. The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), another pro-Biafra group founded in 2012, continues to make the headlines as its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who is facing treason-related charges, operates in exile.

It is true that Nigeria’s federalism is not perfect. But the truth is that problems arising from the country’s imperfect federalism may not necessarily be resolved by separatist impulses. Disunity among the various pro-Biafra groups is sufficient to illustrate this point.

Biafran troops surrendered to the Federal side on January 15, 1970, after a three-year conflict, bringing the Nigerian Civil War to an end, without ending the centrifugal tendencies in the country’s space.

Dokubo’s new group brings up the past.  There is no question that the present promoters of the past are too fixated on yesterday. Their extremism is a cause for concern.  Predictably, the new group, which calls itself a government, will collide with the country’s real government. Dokubo’s “Biafra de facto customary government” is a provocative absurdity.

Hardball

Conflicting approaches to fighting insecurity won’t achieve security. The major causes of insecurity in the country are clear, but there isn’t clarity concerning how to tackle them. Terrorism, banditry and kidnapping are the main problems, and they are fuelled by illegal possession of firearms.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Mallam Garba Shehu said the president “has directed the operatives to shoot anyone seen with dangerous weapons like AK-47, on sight, in as much as the person is not a security operative.”

Then, on March 9, Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle said “recalcitrant bandits have been given two months from today within which to embrace the peace process and surrender their weapons to the government.”  Does this mean that they can carry guns illegally, and also carry out their unlawful activities, within the stated two months?

What happens if security personnel encounter bandits in Zamfara? Are they supposed to carry out the president’s shoot-on-sight order or respect the governor’s two-month ultimatum? It is noteworthy that 6,000 additional troops are expected to arrive in the state soon.

Bandits must not be given the impression that there are ungoverned spaces in the country. Accommodating them reflects a failure of governance. The governor’s ultimatum ultimately sends a wrong message to criminals. It opposes the president’s measure.

According to President Buhari, “Criminals are criminals and should be dealt with accordingly.”  He stressed that his administration “shall continue to deal with insurgents, bandits, kidnappers and other criminals who constitute a threat to innocent citizens across the country.”

His shoot-on-sight order highlights the danger in having firearms in the wrong hands.  Notably, the Senate wants more severe sanctions for anyone caught with an illegal firearm, believing that would help to stop gun-related criminal activities in the country. The Senate is deliberating on a bill titled ‘The Firearms Act CAP F28 LFN 2004 (amendment) Bill, 2021’ sponsored by Senator Uba Sani representing Kaduna Central.

Governor Matawalle’s ultimatum to bandits amounts to unnecessary delay in dealing with them. It won’t be surprising if banditry continues in the state since the governor gave bandits two months to rethink and repent.

It is curious that the governor said the president “has agreed to a timeframe within which the recalcitrant bandits should accept our peace truce and surrender their weapons to the government.”  It remains to be seen how the two-month ultimatum will work side by side with the shoot-on-sight order to achieve security.

The two approaches are conflicting. The point is that those fighting insecurity should be on the same page in the pursuit of security.

Hardball

There is trouble, among Yoruba atavists, with the ruckus between the Oyo Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) and the ever-garrulous, talk-a-dozen, Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK).

The chirp-and-sing FFK had dived into OPC boiling water, by suggesting Wakili Iskalu, the alleged Fulani Ibarapa kidnap kingpin it claimed to have nabbed was, well, a dud and a counterfeit — a case of mistaken identity.  Meanwhile, OPC had expected full, unadulterated plaudits.

Yeah, the Sunday Igboho Saul had killed his thousands.  Shouldn’t the OPC David also kill his ten thousands?  If FFK had praised Igboho to high heavens, for his Ibarapa feat, why is he bursting the OPC bubble for nabbing Wakili, in OPC’s view, the Judas of Judases, of heinous kidnappers, in the Ibarapa front of Igangan, Ayete, and allied tormented settlements?

To FFK’s claim that the arrested man might be a case of mistaken identity, the flak from Oyo OPC, has been massive, crushing and bitter, most of it though no more than name-calling, vulgar abuse and cross-ethnic slurs.  “He lives in Abuja, romancing with the North.  Yet, he was the first to refute the claim that the kidnapper was not Wakili.  Where did he get his information?” a clearly pissed Rotimi Oguntade, Oyo OPC chairman, queried.

Then, the vulgar abuse, quoting a prime source in former President, Olusegun Obasanjo: “I remember,” Oguntade recalled, my enemy’s-enemy-is-my-friend fashion, “former President Olusegun Obasanjo had said that Fani-Kayode can do anything for money and survival.”  This bluster doesn’t give any cogent proof — beyond raw anger — that FFK’s claim is incorrect.

By the way, the same giddily quoted Obasanjo cursed his stars for running into Gani Adams, at a Chief Ayo Adebanjo-organized conclave in Lagos!

Which brings the issue to Oguntade’s Freudian slip — the real reason of OPC anger: “Fani-Kayode was one of the few people that called and congratulated our leader, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland, Iba Gani Adams on Monday, on the success of the operation of the OPC, and the following day, he twisted the story, refuting the claim, that the man apprehended wasn’t Wakili” — a-ha!

Really, Hardball has absolutely no interest in the low-level OPC-to-FFK missile.  The one deserves the other.  Its bother, however, is the twisted — which, in due course, could turn tragic — idea, that atavistic methods could solve the insecurity question in Yorubaland.

But the failure really is the failure of the Federal Government to quickly partner with states to sanction state police, seeing that the present central police can no longer cope with heightened insecurity nationwide.

Even then, mixing “arrests” with brazen arson, no matter the seriousness of allegations, can never be accepted practice in any civilized society — in any case, never in the lighted house on the hill that Obafemi Awolowo built.  You can’t because of present challenges merrily haul yourself back into the past!

But that is exactly what the amalgamated Igboho-OPC response is all about.  Perhaps the scales would fall off not a few dreamy eyes, after the FFK-OPC civil war is resolved, one way or another.

Hardball

In 2016, very early in the Muhammadu Buhari Presidency, it was time to open the Okota Palace Way-Mile 2-Amuwo Odofin-Festac link road, in Lagos State.  Lagos had a brand new governor in Akinwunmi Ambode, successor to Babatunde Raji Fashola, his high flying predecessor.

In fact, Fashola did most of the work to make that vital artery a reality.  At the opening, to be done by the President but delegated to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Fashola was there as newly minted “triple” minister of Power, Works and Housing, as part of the presidential delegation.

Aside from being immediate past Lagos governor,  Fashola was there by virtue of being sitting Works minister, and executive superintendent of all federal roads.  But despite all of that, Ambode, in his speech, never acknowledged Fashola’s role in the works being inaugurated, thus denying Fashola due and decent credit.

Well, what goes around comes around, the English love to say — and so, it is with Ambode.

On March 6, the Pen Cinema flyover, Agege and adjoining works, were inaugurated, with all of that community virtually rising, as one, to toast a good, massive and impactful public works, which should bring folks, out there, traffic comfort.

Now, this was one of the signature projects — visionary or selfish? — Ambode staked his political future on.  Others were the Oshodi travel, transport and commerce hub and the Lagos Airport-Ajao Estate/Mafoluku-Oshodi free way.

Not a few thought Ambode’s choice was rather self-centred — to corral personal glory, when collective credit could have been better assured, by completing the Fashola-era massive rail-and-road works at the Orile Iganmu-Mile 2-Badagry corridor.

He probably hoped those projects he initiated, all bearing his legacy signatures, would deliver him a second term; and cement his own gubernatorial legacy — as Ambode, and not necessarily a Fashola-Ambode continuum.  Still, project and programme continuity, especially from the same political party in power, is how a sane government should roll.

Well, second term blew up in Ambode’s face though, credit to him, he remained in his party and never defected, on the spur of the moment.  To his credit again, he just re-validated his party membership.  Such level-headedness can’t be tied to the present gubernatorial clan, that flit from one party to another — even at half-provocation!

By faithfully completing the Pen Cinema flyover project, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu learned big from Ambode’s mistake — continuity is it!  He said, at theinauguration, that the project was around 30 per cent completion when he took office.  He did well to complete the project — and in good time too.

He did well too, to complete the Oshodi-Abule Egba Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) track, as well as putting final touches to the Oshodi transport, travel and commerce hub, which appears still work-in-progress.

But on both projects, the governor should have publicly acknowledged Ambode’s role; and given him his due at the opening.  That would have been the logical way to put closure to Ambode-era mistakes, truncate that uncivil cycle, and secure Sanwo-Olu’s own running legacy as focused citizen governor.

Hardball

Nigeria’s complicated security crisis means that the new service chiefs appointed in January have their work cut out. Tackling the mix of terrorism, banditry and kidnapping will require not only commitment but also a fresh approach to an old problem.

President Muhammadu Buhari, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, further complicated the situation with an order that they should end insecurity in the country before the rainy season.  He said: “You have got a few weeks to do that because by the rainy season, we expect people to develop confidence and go back to the land so that we don’t get into trouble by being away from the field and therefore unable to produce enough food for the nation.”

When is the rainy season? “In the south the rainy season lasts from March to November, whereas in the far north it lasts only from mid-May to September,” according to Britannica.

This means that the service chiefs are expected to end insecurity before March in the south, and before mid-May in the far north. The president gave the order on March 5. Is it realistic?

It is understandable that he wants to give the impression that his administration is concerned about the security crisis, and would like to end it as soon as possible. But his dramatic order gives the impression that he is merely playing to the gallery.

It is a tall order.  Boko Haram’s terrorism started more than 10 years ago, and the insurgents have continued to send a message of defiance to the military.

Banditry is escalating, despite President Buhari’s recent order on the issue. Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity Mallam Garba Shehu said the president “has directed the operatives to shoot anyone seen with dangerous weapons like AK-47, on sight, in as much as the person is not a security operative.”

Going  by striking mass kidnapping of students in Chibok, Dapchi, Kankara, Kagara and Jangebe in Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Niger and Zamfara states, among other numerous cases of abduction, the evil business of kidnapping is thriving.

These are the problems President Buhari ordered the service chiefs to solve before the rainy season begins. He said they should “go out into the fields and every part of the country to ensure peace and security.” In the circumstances, that is easier said than done.  The specified time frame for the restoration of security is ridiculous, and suggests that the president did not mean what he said.

Hardball

Matters of the heart could be grave.  But that doesn’t mean one of the troubled couples should end up in the grave.  Nevertheless, that was nearly the case, with a Nasarawa husband and unfaithful wife.

It’s the grim and bitter triangular story of Philip Tersso, a Yelwata, Nasarawa State, native, his wife, Mary and Tersso’s friend that nevertheless came across more as a fiend, Aonowase Chiahemba.

Chiahemba allegedly slept with his own friend’s wife and got her pregnant — with both illicit lovers calculating poor hubby wouldn’t survive his illness!  Indeed, grave matters of the heart!

Still, while condemning infidelity and the unconscionable conduct of a wife that, in her own words, decided to “test her fertility with another man”, there is a lot of grey in-between — heavy emotional stuff that perhaps cautions you to restrain from dishing out hot blames.

Mary, in 10 years of marriage, couldn’t conceive.  At a point, she even claimed her husband wasn’t touching her again.  So, when the poor man fell ill, the woman, claiming starvation, decided to try her luck elsewhere.  But that her choice was her husband’s friend suggested the pair had, for some time, been ogling each other — despicable and condemnable betrayal, no doubt.

Still, nature held the ace.  Somewhat,  Tersso survived his grave illness.  But Mary found the result of her illicit affair growing in her womb — three months!  Now, the shame of owning up to infidelity, when her husband needed her most, clashed with keeping a pregnancy — and child — she had always craved!

It’s the making of classical conflict, and the huge consequences of a decision, either way!

She chose to bear the shame and blame of grave treachery.  But her gravely hurt husband chose a gravely sentence — to bury his unfaithful and flint-hearted wife alive!  Who else would cheat on her husband, with his very close friend, when her man battled a life-threatening illness?

Law of Moses-like, the man decided his wife wanted him dead.  An eye for an eye, he too would be damned if he didn’t kill her first!  He dug an open grave and started stalking his wife.  But thank God, his threat alerted the woman to the danger, and help came before the worst!

Beyond crime and punishment, this is a case of the heart that needs special handling.  Tersso needs to be helped out of his mortal anger.  A threat to bury another alive borders on the insane.  But so was his marital hurt, a betrayal of betrayals that triggers the worst emotions.  The Nasarawa department of social welfare, and state psychiatry authorities, should rush to his aid.

As for Mary and her illicit lover, how do they even start facing the shame?  Even if they somewhat got their deserts, what of the innocent child growing inside Mary, who was never party to the lovers’ liaison but was the inevitable result?  And what long-life stigma and shame awaits that innocent child!

Hardball

if the lower courts in Nigeria can fail to deliver justice, what do we say when the baba of all courts, the Supreme Court, runs away like a hen at the sight of a fox?

We can see that in the case of Senator Stephen Odey and Jarigbe Agom Jarigbe. For Nigerians not familiar with case, both men are members of the PDP, contested the primary for the senate seat in Cross River State. When he knew he was losing, Jarigbe walked out. Odey won decisively and the PDP sent his name to INEC. INEC was compelled to release his name as candidate.

Suddenly, one John Alaga, a Jarigbe associate, filed a case saying that Jarigbe won and that he was challenging Jarigbe for forged certificate. Laugh!

Neither Odey nor PDP was joined in the suit, and a court ordered a certificate of return for Jarigbe’s without asking for details of the primary that he purportedly won. Now, Odey already had a certificate of return and had been sworn in as a senator. So, we have one senate seat, two senators, two certificates of return. One of them – Jarigbe – was not picked by his party. It is a rogue senator based on rogue primary and rogue verdict. The senate president has said he could not swear in two people and that has stopped Jarigbe from fulfilling his counterfeit ambition. They could not get a rogue senate president to award a rogue seat in a concocted chamber.

Now, the matter went to the Supreme Court, and Odey was asked to issue what is known as substituted service since Jarigbe’s lawyer says they did not receive his appeal.  The apex court asked him to publish it in the Leadership Newspaper. He obliged. That done, the same Supreme Court ought to address the substantive issue as to who contested the primary, who the party elected and who should be the senator. The same Supreme Court, by a vote of four to three, struck out the substituted service and on a basis of technicality, would not yield to its own decision on substituted service. The court ruled against itself. The man who said he did not see the service was, paradoxically, present in court.

The minority judgment ruled that it was an absurd decision.  Why couldn’t the so-called wise men see what even less endowed brains see: That Jarigbe is scrambling for judgment. This is supreme confusion. The justices cannot, in conscience and law, award a senate seat to a phony. That explains why it could not give a consequential order to oust a lawfully elected senator of our republic. It is just clutching at straws or beating the air. Odey has filed to restrain the senate president from swearing in anyone else. It is katakata justice unfolding at the top.