The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Rapist or looney?

    IT was Achebe’s Things Fall Apart that popularised, at least among the non-Igbo, that Igbo saying: a lizard that falls from the high Iroko tree praises himself, even if no one else did.  That is said to explain why the lizard, after a big fall, nods repeatedly to itself in pride!

    Well, those are wise quips, applied to sane situations.  But could you also apply them to insane ones?

    That question is necessary given this tale, perhaps real, perhaps apocryphal, but both possibilities raising a serious mental challenge, beyond the action of the moment.

    Nura Abdullahi, 32, is alleged to have raped a 14-year old.  Such act of paedophilia ought to have brought out shame — at being caught in the act — and also dread: for getting dire penalty coming to you.

    But read Abdullahi’s reported reaction to his bind: “I have been waiting for a day like this,” he reportedly declared, “and I am happy that I set traps for her severally and at last, she fell into the trap and I have accomplished the mission of having sex with her. With the accomplished mission,” he gloated: “I am ready for the consequence; let the law take its course on me; I am a happy man already.”

    Seriously?   A “lizard” paedophile praising himself for a rare accomplishment, even if the whole world condemns the abomination he did?  What indeed is the world turning into?

    Abdullahi was reportedly arrested and paraded to the public in Minna, Niger State, after he had allegedly committed the crime in the Suleja Local Government Area.

    Abdullahi’s glorying in rape, not to say paedophilia, bucks normal behaviour. Raping an underaged teenager was bad enough — and ought to be severely punished.  But the push, to such a dastardly act, would appear a troubled psyche.

    That lends further credence to some positions that rape is indeed a mental disorder, which ought to be tackled from its roots.

    Has rape become an epidemic, given its frightful recurrence these days?  Or was it just under-reported before?

    Either of the two scenarios has grim consequences.  If rape is flaring, in comparison with the past, it shows the society may be becoming more mentally diseased, a scary situation that should concern all.

    But if it had been under-reported, it means there could have been more sexual perverts among us, than we ever care to admit.  The society, therefore, has been lugging too many loonies who nevertheless pretend to be normal!

    You’ve got to break out in cold sweat, thinking of both possibilities!

    It is a stiff challenge to public health authorities, since rape would appear not just an open-and-shut crime, which time in the can can’t just put away.

    It is time, therefore, for a multidisciplinary approach to tackling rape, with the  criminal-justice system cohabiting with the health authorities to forge an antidote.  Otherwise, the society may well be doomed!

  • Nigerian wonder

    BEFORE the departure for the 2019 All Africa Games in Morocco, not a few felt the outing would be a disaster.  Everyone pleaded the normal pre-championship cliche, before any major sports fiesta: near-zero preparations.

    In a way, the outing was a “disaster” for about every country that participated, given the huge winning margin of Egypt.  Egypt’s 102 gold medals were more than South Africa’s entire medal haul of 87 medals (with 36 gold) — which came third — and very near Nigeria’s total haul of 127 medals (with 46 gold).

    Nigeria were second on the medals table.  But should Egypt have split their gold medals into two, and gifted one-half to a virtual country, that country would still have bested Nigeria with 51 gold medals (to Nigeria’s 46).

    So, that Nigeria was second would appear a travesty of ranking, for Egypt’s was such a tear-away win!  But the more devastating losers would appear South Africa, which enjoys comparative facilities with Egypt in terms of sporting spread and breath, though with far less population and clearly fewer talents.

    South Africa too doesn’t usually fall under the spell of “no preparation”, the perennial Nigerian disease.  So, what really happened to the land of Nelson Mandela, with all its promise of an all-conquering rainbow coalition in sports?

    Still, Morocco would appear one of Nigeria’s finest at the All Africa Games, since the fiesta’s inception, given the gains the country made in some relatively new sports.  A surprising example was canoeing, where Nigeria grossed three gold medals; and gymnastics, where the country got at least a gold medal too.

    In other sports, Nigeria dominated football male (silver) and female (gold).  But for the male team’s final loss to Burkina Faso, it would have been double gold.  In Wrestling, Nigeria grabbed five out of six available gold medals, nicking a silver in the sixth.

    In athletics, Nigeria topped the medals table: not only getting the gold in the 100 meters dash for men, thus producing the Games’ fastest man, it could have been double gold in men’s and women’s 4 x 100 meters relay, but for the men’s anchor’s slow-down, barely 10 meters to the finish line, to gift neighbouring Ghana the gold.

    In Badminton, Nigeria also topped, while it grabbed the men’s Table Tennis singles gold from Egypt — after an all-Nigerian final: winner Omotayo Olajude versus Aruna Quadri.  With a sole gold from boxing, Nigeria faded from a traditional bastion.  But it also consolidated on weightlifting, in which it is a continental power house.

    The question is: if with little or no preparation, Nigeria could mount such a challenge, how would it be, were the country to be fully primed with excellent facilities and peak preparation for athletes?

    That is the challenge before Sunday Dare, the new Youth and Sports minister.  Over the years, even faced with indifferent sports administration and management, Nigerian athletes have somewhat tried to prove their mettle.

    It is therefore time for sports officialdom to play their own part.  With both sides working in harmony, the future of Nigerian sports is brighter.

    For Team Nigeria, it might be a poor second given the margin of Egypt’s soar-away win.  Still, even that is a testimony to the Nigeria abundance of talent and indomitability of spirit.

    Congratulations, Team Nigeria.  But it’s high time sports administrators too stepped in to play their role.

  • A tale of two councils

    FIRST, a toast to democracy!  It demystifies our leaders, and tells them they are no unchallengeable Leviathans.

    On August 27, The Nation reported on two local government councils that seemed in a rat race to fleece their citizens, either by themselves, or by hustlers, acting in their names.

    One was Igando-Ikotun Local Council Development Area (LCDA), where some hustlers were having a field day, extorting money from lily-livered motorists, on trumped up traffic offences (“Outrage over hoodlums’ extortion of motorists”, p. 5).

    The other was the Itire Area Office of the Mushin Local Government (“Duty or extortion?”, here, in Hardball).

    Both stories published the virtual “smoking guns”: a N25, 000 receipt, in the name of the Igando-Ikotun LCDA — a phoney receipt, for a phoney infraction, issued by phoney operators; and an authorizing banner and a N200 parking receipt, for the Itire Office of the Mushin Local Government — both concrete evidences that the deeds being complained about actually took place.

    It is remarkable — and both councils ought to be praised — that there has been a prompt response.

    The Igando-Ikotun LCDA disowned the thieves who, in its name, had been ripping off unsuspecting motorists.  That is good.  At least now, we know the council is not officially part of that racket.   Still, the slur is there — and the council had better investigate and punish those criminals.

    As for gullible citizens whose instinct is to beg and cut a deal, even if the so-called infraction is suspicious, they should learn to stand up for their rights.  Still, the near-instant disavowal at least portrays the Igando-Ikotun LCDA as having regard for its voters; by trying to make amends, even if it claims it wasn’t party to the “original sin”.

    That can’t be said of Emmanuel Bamigboye, the Mushin Local Government chair, who in his response, tried a legalistic waffle, claiming his council’s N200 parking levy was in order (“Park-and-pay not extortion”, The Nation, August 29).

    By his claim, the park-and-pay policy was arrived at after due process : the council’s legislative arm enacted it as a bye-law.  But beyond the legalese, the real reason by the law is rather amusing.

    Hear the chairman: “So, we felt it is better to regulate the way people use the compound at our area office by asking them to pay for parking.  This has reduced theft and unnecessary intrusion.  It has allowed those who have business to transact on the premises to come in.”

    In other words, because the council cannot  secure its own area office space, it must slap a levy on lawful citizens who have legitimate business to transact there!  That shows the high regard the council has for those living within its jurisdiction and the general public.

    The chairman’s claim that proceeds from his “park-and-pay” levy are pumped into improving the facility is rather rich.  He is just lucky Nigerians are generally non-litigious.  Otherwise, the council would have been buried under a welter of suits, for the violence that premises’ unpaved grounds wreak on vehicles!

    Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had better call to order these reckless councils before they give his government an irreversible bad name — just as former Governor

    Ambode did, putting on leash the VIO troopers, who really were running wild.

     

     

  • Fair riposte or plain toxicity?

    The Atiku Media Office’s reaction to a story in The Nation, over the probe of a N50 million “donation” to the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL), speaks of nothing but toxic politics.

    To start with, what is OOPL without controversial “donations”?  The library — First in Africa! — came to life by “donations”, to the cause of a sitting president and Oil minister; who sat not unlike Big Brother that watched all, as states, oil aristocrats and blooming flowers of the economy, out-did themselves to “donate”.  And don’t you ever think those “donations” were not free and democratic!

    Now, it’s another “donation”, to the same OOPL, on the virtual eve of a major election.  Now, the Atiku Media Office claimed that particular donation, of $140, 000 (changed to N50 million) was to the not-for-profit OOPL, which funded research to promote peace; and whose chief promoter, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, had developed himself, after a stint as military Head of State, writing books and midwifing local and international seminars for peace, progress and development — applause, applause!

    But it so happened that one of those books, My Watch, had dismissed Alhaji Abubakar Atiku — and in unprintable words to boot! — as perhaps the most undesirable scoundrel to have gained public office as Obasanjo’s Vice President from 1999 to 2007.  For all of these, Atiku never sued for libel, to defend his honour.

    But then, came the 2019 elections, and Atiku the Devil suddenly became Obasanjo’s newly minted Atiku the Immaculate — and viola, a N50 million “donation” made it to the till of OOPL!

    Well, the EFCC alleges it was hush-hush slush money to illicitly skew the outcome of the election.  But Atiku Media has come out to say it was a “donation”, facilitated by an Atiku in-law, who definitely is no outlaw, by his legitimate “donation” — fair enough!

    In any case, it is ongoing investigation and it’s Atiku Media Office’s words again EFCC’s.  Let each party bring out its facts; and let the pubic decide who is true and earnest.

    Still, the Atiku camp appears to have dire problem with a newspaper breaking legitimate news, simply because it has some problems with the optics of that news.

    It lashes out in blind hysteria, not unlike a trapped Samson, after its Philistine traducers: “May we also add that whenever the EFCC wish to come up with mischief, they fly their kite in The Nation.  That is now a pattern.  It should be clear to Nigerians that the Presidency, APC, the EFCC, the FIRS and The Nation are now working together as five fingers of the same leprous hands.”

    Nice try!  — Except that it sounds like the impassioned piece of an infantile propagandist, crunching plagiarism that everyone knows (God bless the late Bola Ige!) and expecting everyone to applaud its crude and callow show!

    Still, neither bad grace nor vulgar abuse should stall a rather interesting development in the gripping Obasanjo-Atiku continuum, of hated foes turned doting lovers, in the most dramatic of settings!

    On the contrary, this crude piece of communication only underscores what appears a disturbing toxicity in Atiku’s politics.  Yet, what it needs to project, at least among right thinking and decent citizens, is fair riposte, rendered in polite and cultured thinking and language. But alas!

    Still, it is good The Nation published the Atiku reaction.  After all, as the Bible says: by their words, we shall know them!

  • Duty or extortion?

    HOW do you interpret this: a local government council office charging law-abiding citizens, driving there for legitimate business, for parking space?

    Shouldn’t a council have a parking lot?  Is not having one a legit way to raise revenue?  Or a brazen effort to extort the very citizens that voted the council chair and his councillors to office?

    Lagos Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu must hear this!

    It was about 9 am on Friday, August 9.  Some workers at the FRSC office, at the Itire Area Office, Mushin Local Government, off the Cele Bus stop, on the Mile 2-Oshodi Expressway, had alerted Hardball that his renewed driver’s licence might be ready for pick-up.

    So, to that office Hardball drove, only to be stopped at the gate, by some council(?) officials.  What for?  You could not enter the yard, they claimed, until you pay a parking fee of N200!

    They pointed at a small banner hung on the gate: “Car Park: for a Trip — Pay & Park”, the banner announced, with the full complement of the council’s logo.

    In the ensuing exchange, one of the officials, a female, politely explained that the council had firmed the park-and-pay business to a private operator.

    After much resistance, some gruff, thuggish and loutish-looking fellows boasted to puncture the tyre of anyone that entered the council yard without paying the new levy.  Eventually, they prevailed, thereafter issuing an analogue receipt for N200.

    Now, is this legit revenue raising?  Or unconscionable extortion of citizens, suggesting deep contempt for the same people that voted the council officials into office?

    That is the question begging for the governor’s attention.

  • Banality upon banality

    If you always dive into the sewers, how do you soar to the skies, to help raise public discourse, lift policy and ensure good governance?

    How do you rise to dizzying heights, in terms of winning ideas, if your thinking is fixated on Lilliput — remember Lilliput, the fictional place of the puny race, in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels?

    A president announced a line of official reportage, via the chief of staff and the secretary to the government of the federation (SGF), and the media goes ga-ga with sterile controversy! Is the trite even beyond the ken of the most vocal in the public space?

    A new minister, in self-deprecatory banter to the top echelon of his ministry, jokes he knows little about his new posting, and a newspaper turns it to be hot news, followed by impassioned debates, about square pegs in round holes, as that cliche goes!

    Even if some members of the public can’t quite read between the lines, must the media also serve news outside its context, to drive banal controversies, and, for commerce, mislead their readers?

    What President Muhammadu Buhari said about ministers going through the chief of staff; and the SGF coordinating policy, cabinet, inter-ministry, agencies and departmental affairs is trite.  Yet it elicited thunderous debate, especially by the political opposition, which seems to have run out of gas, except when clutching to mischief, no matter how absurd.

    As to serving the comment by Rauf Aregbesola, new minister of the Interior, out of context, the media lobby that plagued his Osun governorship with deliberate bad press appears to have fired their first shot, to welcome him to his new beat.

    Still, doesn’t ethics in reportage hold anything for today’s media?  Is clear abuse of media space, by the deliberate skew of stories, which borders on media terrorism, now the norm?

    Clearly, such empty sensationalism is not sustainable.  It is the biblical wide and merry way that leads to perdition.  Any medium that travels that route only chisels away at its own credibility, until it becomes completely nude, with all the shame public nudity brings.  But beyond individual self-destruction by some media, it also chisels away at the believability of the industry, and a dip, in its collective confidence level, in the market.

    If sales and readership of newspapers are constricting by the day, at least you know one of the reasons.

    But beyond market suicide, how can the media raise the level of public discourse, if all its leading lights do is feed on empty and banal controversies?

    If the media yells and screams and hoots about low-quality governance, how can it be a solution and cure, if its own pastime is low-quality reportage, that fuels low quality controversies?

    For any society desiring progress and advancement, banality should be a no-no.  But that seems completely lost on all, in this season of banality and more banality.

  • Captain Compromise

    Wadume”, the popular name of the alleged kidnap kingpin, central to the Ibi, Taraba State army killings, is said to be a corruption of crooked English “Why do me?” — ample proof of the serious lexical challenge of the speaker.

    With Hamisu Bala, the real name of Wadume, the alleged kidnap baron, the Army captain, in the vortex of that mess, may well blurt out, with his current pathetic plight — “why do me?”  And why not?  It is the making of Captain Compromise!

    Wadume, according to a story in The Nation (August 22), reportedly told investigators that Captain Compromise, aside from a couple of soldiers, presumably in the local garrison, is on his pay roll.  Wadume claimed he, some three weeks ago, wired an undisclosed but allegedly huge amount into the captain’s bank account.

    Besides, Wadume claimed that to beat off security personnel’s curiosity, while on his kidnapping jaunts, he had a regular, tested and proven formula of spraying them with N20, 000!  Pray, are our security folks that cheap?

    Apparently so.  Otherwise, Captain Compromise wouldn’t have, to spring Wadume, ordered his soldiers to waste the lives of three elite cops, part of the crack  IGP undercover Intelligence Response Team (IRT), led by DCP Abba Kyari, an outfit that has contributed a lot to busting crimes nationwide in recent times, plus the one civilian that perished with them.

    Perhaps the cops and the ill-fated civilian were nothing but “bloody civilians”, as befits that military conceit, at the highest lunacy of Nigeria’s military rule?

    Still, even if the lives of “bloody civilians” don’t matter, is Captain Compromise so cheap that, for alleged filthy lucre, he would think nothing of gravely compromising the institutional majesty of the Army to which he belongs, setting it up against the Police; and making it an object of scorn among an aghast populace?

    And hey, how many other Captain Compromise and allied hustlers abound in the Army, trading their service ammo for dirty blood money; and becoming such real and present danger to citizens they signed up to protect?

    It’s no time waffle on some sick esprit de corps.  It’s rather time to fish out these bastards to the cause of the security forces, civil and military — civil and military, because such reckless abuses are not limited to the Army alone.

    Why, the other day, right in Igando, Lagos, a quad of policemen got captured on video shooting point blank two arrested suspects, even if the two were handcuffed, and prostrate in a mini-bus.  How can the security people inflict such murderous cruelty on citizens they are paid to secure?

    So, let Captain Compromise, and his killer soldiers, get what is coming their way.  But more importantly, let both the Army and the Police seize the Wadume mess, as an urgent opportunity to rid their respective services of rotten eggs.

    Those are no good to anyone, give their their service agencies a bad name; and are clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens.

  • Diezani wants her pearl

    A GOOD name, says the holy book, is better that silver and gold.  But what if that gold is worth a whopping N14 billion?  And hey, is heft in gold and good name mutually exclusive?

    So, maybe you wouldn’t grudge Diezani Alison-Madueke, former Oil minister under President Goodluck Jonathan, in the eye of the storm for alleged sleaze, for hankering after her jewelries!

    This is more so, when she pleads fundamental human rights in her defence.

    On July 5, a Federal High Court in Lagos had ordered a temporary forfeiture of 2, 149 pieces of jewelry; and a customized golden iPhone, which EFCC investigation claimed were alleged proceeds of sleaze.

    The golden cache was an impressive 33 sets, of “419 expensive bangles and 35 expensive rings”.  Then, there were 304 expensive ear-rings, 267 expensive necklaces, 189 expensive wristwatches, 78 expensive bracelets, 77 expensive brooches and 74 expensive pendants — apparently all worth their respective weights in gold, a cumulative N14 billion!

    The customized golden iPhone?   No more than a glorious, golden clincher!

    It is this trove that the EFCC is asking the court to forfeit to the government.  But why shouldn’t Diezani fight a last-ditch battle to keep her treasure — and just as well!  If all fails, should your hard earned treasures desert you too?

    Diezani argues that EFCC illegally gained access into her apartment and carted away the items, without a court order.  Could that border on state burglary?  Only the courts can tell!

    Read Also: Solving the Diezani riddle

    Then, the former minister alleged such invasion of private property, in the owner’s absence, amounted to a breach of her constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to own glittering jewelry and allied pearl, under Sections 43 and 44 of the 1999 Constitution.

    Going by these provisions therefore, Diezani argued the courts lacked the power to rule for forfeiture, more so when EFCC had not charged her with any crime, not served her with any summons or even granted her fair hearing.

    Again, the court would have the final say in the matter; and both sides, EFCC lawyers and Diezani’s attorneys, are set joust, before the courts — for gold!

    As the fireworks begin, you’ve got think of a sis in distress.  God, what would a woman of glam and class, splash and dash, and a beauty and fashionista to boot, without her jewelry?

    Is that not tantamount to sucking oxygen out of the human nose?  If that happens, what life remains?

    So, as the battle hits up in the courts, you gat to think of one in utter distress.  A good name may be better than silver and gold. Yet, you can’t possibly deny a citizen her democratic right to gold?

    Hardball has booked a ring side ticket, as the battle for gold heats up!  It gonna be, as the Americans would say, a helluva battle!

  • Ekweremadu’s Nuremberg trial

    Nuremberg, in Germany’s state of Bavaria, was the hub of hate-filled Nazi misrule, which propelled  World War 2 (1939-1945), in which thousands lost their lives.

    But it is also fixed in the brain of history, as a city that served the Adolf Hitler thugs, their stiff comeuppance.  They got tried; and the guilty among them convicted — and condemned — in that city.

    Now, Nuremberg just acquired an added meaning for Nigeria’s troubled politics.  In Nuremberg, some miscreants, said to be Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) thugs, descended on former Deputy Senate President (DSP) Ike Ekweremadu, and beat him black and blue.

    The show was supposed to be the second New Yam festival, by the Ndigbo in Germany — Diaspora Nigeria’s proud export to the world.

    But it ended as the Nuremberg trial of Ekweremadu: heckled, pushed, shoved, beaten and nearly battered.

    Still, Ekweremadu wasn’t the only “convict” of that macabre court. The eventual shame was the Ndigbo — and ultimately Nigeria’s.  How can any civilised people descend with such fury, on one of their own?  Shame!

    But the Ekweremadu odyssey is really elite opportunism gone sour.  IPOB was a hate enterprise, edged on by the body language of a section of the Igbo elite; in the fond belief that that mad dog would only growl, bite and maul others.  But alas!  That dog just turned against its own in Germany.  Shame!

    That was all too clear by the way some Southeast elite rationalised Nnamdi Kanu’s explosive hate and offensive faith orgies, against the non-Igbo.  Even when that elicited some other northern loonies, giving the Igbo a deadline to leave the North, it was still ceaseless romanticisation of IPOB as some pan-Igbo cudgel, to deal with others.  Now, the chicken has come home to roost!

    But Ekweremadu is only a sickly metaphor for the Nigerian irresponsible political elite.  Even in the Southwest, you could gauge similar irresponsibility and recklessness, with the crass Yoruba ultranationalism, powered by rogue ethnic supremacy, emanating from the security crisis; and the accompanying Fulani roasting.

    This new love for concentrated hate for others, for ethnic political advantage, is the new virus afflicting the Nigerian elite, adept at projecting personal grudges as pan-ethnic angst, to set the masses against one another, along ethnic lines.  Yet, the masses that have no problem with one another!

    Let the Ekweremadu torrid experience be a turning point, from all this madness.  The elite that set rogue bodies, against rival elite on the ethnic plane, only dig its own grave.  Ekweremadu is living example.

  • Evil servants?

    First, it was the President of the 8th Senate, Bukola Saraki, dragged before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), for alleged corrupt practices.

    Then, it was the former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, arraigned before that same administrative court.

    Now, it appears the turn of Winifred Oyo-Ita, sitting but embattled Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, now grappling with a reported N3 billion alleged sleaze, which though is still at the investigative stage.

    What is it about Nigeria’s top elite fitting into the apocryphal but hardly flattering description as the contemporary civil servant as “evil servant”?

    Yes, Dr. Saraki escaped conviction; while Justice Onnoghen got convicted by the CCT, after a failed play at legal technicalities to buy time; and crass stonewalling to remain head of Nigeria’s judiciary, even when it was clear his immaculate judicial robe was smudged beyond redemption.

    Still, neither Saraki’s innocence nor Onnoghen CCT guilt and conviction (a stain on the Judiciary) drove up public confidence in the public services, as Caesar’s squeaky clean redoubt (witness: Caesar’s wife must not only be above board but must be seen to be so).  That popular perception of the government, as a wild joint of unbridled sleaze, persists.

    That is the sinking feeling this Oyo-Ita scandal brings  — the head of the federal civil service, in a N3 billion scandal!  Does it then connote that the engine room of Federal Government policy has become reggae star Max Romeo’s father’s place of worship that had become a den of thieves? Scary!

    First it was the Senate.  Then, it was the Judiciary.  Now, it’s the bureaucracy.  What’s happening?

    Still, one hopes all of these are allegations that would be cleared in no time.  But that would appear the optimist’s fond wish, just to maintain some balance of sanity.

    What with the alleged racketeering in esta-code falsifications to steal from the common till; alleged abuse of office to funnel contracts to cronies and proxies; an alleged slush account which N600 million could not be explained; and a putative collusion with a former minister, which suggests a sinister tag-team, of a ministry’s two top dogs, to fleece the same government they both swore to diligently serve?

    Then, the gender question, after the Diezani sleaze scandal!  Isn’t anyone, among the Nigeria elite in the public space, sane again?  Doesn’t the feminine gender count for something again, when the question is integrity?  Isn’t there any upright person left, male or female, at least to earn Jehovah’s mercy, to avert the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?

    It’s an unflattering time out there, for the Nigerian elite.  Still, Hardball prays — and fasts too — that the Oyo-Ita scandal is only a glitch that would be cleared after dutiful investigations; and the nation’s federal bureaucracy would receive a clean bill of health.

    The civil servant as evil servant?  It’s quite a difficult bone to swallow!