Category: Hardball

From days of old, neither the hood ever made the monk nor the cassock the priest. It’s this same wisdom you’ll find in the ancient maxim that you do not judge a book by its cover. Even the Holy Book says that it is by their fruit you’ll know them.

This age-old wisdom, however, seemed lost on residents of Aponrin in Agbowo, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, who were reported defrauded last week by a Gambian purporting to be a cleric conducting a religious crusade. The Gambian said to be named Owen Abraham – you never can tell that is his true name, because nothing else about him holds up – staged a three-day crusade at the end of which he reportedly absconded with 52 Android and iPhones, money and other valuables belonging to those who came for the crusade he organised. He reportedly took custody of those phones to enable crusade attendees to concentrate on the purported spiritual task  hand. Beyond artistry at a high degree for mass deception, this fake clergyman might well have been into mass hypnosis.

Reports said the man claimed to be led of God to Ibadan from The Gambia to stage his crusade. He reportedly enlisted some locals to mobilise residents to attend the programme and made grandiose promises of benefits he was offering. He also got the attendees to engage in fasting and prayer that he claimed their phones would distract them from. One of the victims, a widow, was reported saying many widows attended the crusade because he promised to give each a bag of rice and money. Agbowo area being a student zone because it is opposite the University of Ibadan gate, the fake pastor apparently targeted this population as well by promising to empower students with scholarships. “Someone in my area invited me for the crusade. The crusader wore a pastor’s regalia. He said he would buy a house for one of us, and that the house would be fully furnished. He promised some people who attended the crusade the kind of money that even politicians cannot give out,” the widow-victim was reported saying. The fake pastor also sold purported miracle water to the attendees at N4,800 a bottle. On the last day of the crusade, however, he absconded with the phones, money and other valuables he had collected. He was nowhere to be found at the last count and has been declared wanted by the police.

Abraham (or whatever his real name) exploited all the weaknesses in Nigerian nationhood for what he did: the porous customs, lax security surveillance, poor economy and poverty-induced gullibility. But it shouldn’t be difficult to nab him, just reverse his tracks.

The irony was totally lost on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, though a globally acclaimed novelist, in her open letter to US President Joe Biden: a Nigerian election denier, writing the victim of American election deniers! 

How ironically hollow!   She dubbed the open letter: “Nigeria’s hollow democracy”!

Geoffrey Chaucer, the Old English poet-author of Canterbury Tales, would bawl from his grave: if gold rusts, what would iron do?

That’s is the starting creative recklessness of that piece — and by Jove, it teems with uncreative recklessness all through!

For starters, how does Adichie frame her sweeping submissions — most of them false or grossly exaggerated — on such hear-says from “cousins” and sundry kin, who themselves were belching emotive tales?  How can she stack her cards — emotive and deliberate — and proceed on those teary tales to pronounce a democracy “hollow”? 

Or is she as deliberate about her diction in her fictions; as she is reckless in real-life politics, because she suffers emotive and primordial bile?  How tragic!

Then, the reckless old wives’ tales — and Adichie is certainly no old wife! — about the INEC chair being “compromised”; and the president-elect allegedly doing that in foreign currency, all based on self-admitted hear-says!  Hardball hopes she has solid evidence to prove these grave allegations, should the traduced decide to sue!

Then, to Biden and his probable yawn: how would the American President react to the empty wailing of election deniers in Nigeria, when he’s a victim of similar crazy folks in America?

Like Trump, Peter Obi clearly lost on February 25.  Like Trump too, Obi and ilk are making a screech of proclaiming day as night, or night as day; in the worst tradition of Trump’s “alternative facts”.

Two full years and a quarter down the line from 2020, even Fox News, Trump and co’s favourite lying platform, are admitting the scandalous election lies told on their channel.  Trump too is gradually facing deserved comeuppance, for his never-seen-before executive rascality.

That would yet be the earned path of Obi and co — history vacuums that would take liberty for licence: Obi’s running mate threatening a virtual war on the state, should it inaugurate a duly elected president!  Yet, these blokes lived through the nation-tearing crisis of the June 12, 1993 scandalous annulment?

Is Adichie attaching her treasured craft to those vermin?  Good riddance!  But when the due results come — and they will — let Adichie not embark on another round of Igbo victim tales, fiction or otherwise.

There is something missing amid the alarming allegations of plots against democracy that have intensified in the country in recent weeks. That thing is action by those who should do something about the matter. 

The Department of State Services (DSS), in a statement by its spokesperson, Peter Afunanya, apparently corroborated the weighty allegations, saying it “considers the plot, being pursued by these entrenched interests, as not only an aberration but a mischievous way to set aside the constitution and undermine civil rule as well as plunge the country into an avoidable crisis.”

Describing the alleged plot as an “illegality totally unacceptable in a democracy,” the security agency added that “The planners, in their many meetings, have weighed various options, which include, among others, to sponsor endless violent mass protests in major cities to warrant a declaration of State of Emergency. Another is to obtain frivolous court injunctions to forestall the inauguration of new executive administrations and legislative houses at the federal and state levels.”

It warned: “While its monitoring continues, the DSS will not hesitate to take decisive and necessary legal steps against these misguided elements to frustrate their obnoxious intentions.’’

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had announced that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won the February 25 presidential election.  The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, who was second, and the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Obi, who came third, are challenging the election result and seeking judicial intervention to overturn the winner’s victory.

Interestingly, the protesting losers have dissociated themselves from the said conspiracy. The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Ibrahim Abdullahi, was reported saying the DSS “should immediately go after such persons because it is the right thing to do. What are they still waiting for?”

The chief spokesperson for the LP’s presidential campaign council, Yunusa Tanko, also said if the DSS “has verifiable facts and evidence as regards those who are planning to subvert the will of democracy, they should not hesitate to bring them out as quickly as possible,” adding that the security agency should not “intimidate the people when they are trying to fight for their rights.”

The LP’s insinuation that the DSS allegation of an anti-democratic plot by some persons is an attempt to silence those challenging INEC’s presidential election result was made possible by the agency’s failure to act on claimed intelligence about the alleged conspiracy.

 The DSS should demonstrate that its allegation is not a fabrication designed to “intimidate” certain targets by taking action against the alleged conspirators. Its inaction casts doubt on the veracity of the allegation.

Americans are probably unaware of this Yoruba saying — except, of course, they have a similar concept of their own: he who does what no one never did, would see what no one never saw.

That’s Donald Trump, the monied but classless one that stumbled upon the hallowed US Presidency.  But instead of belting himself up to the dizzying heights of that high office, he dragged the office down to his epic classlessness.

Since Trump’s MAGA — Make America Great Again — dawned, America has known no peace.  “Maga”, in Nigeria’s picturesque pidgin, means “the scammed”.  But Trump’s MAGA is a not-so-veiled racist rally to post-Barack Obama America, aimed at scamming the most obtuse among Trump’s White tribe. 

No wonder Trump’s MAGA resonates most among the most classless of those folks — easily “maga-ed” (read scammed) by Trump’s childish wails and brazen lies that his delusional tribe has gone to venerate as “alternative facts”, to the chagrin of more decent Americans across the races.

But stoking the ultra-base instincts of his Republican base, Trump’s merrily deluded fans are fated to sinking with him, like the fallen angels with Lucifer, in Englishman John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost.

The first of those serial falls just hit Trump, with his criminal incitement for alleged dodgy payments loaded as legit, to allegedly veil (a) more serious crime(s).  He’s billed for docking at Manhattan, New York City today.

As usual, the trash-talking Trump has dubbed the seedy affair “political persecution” and a “witch hunt”; and goaded his zombies to protest — and they, and perhaps anyone that is anyone in his troubled GOP, has latched on to that emotive blather, as if crying wolf would alter the facts of the alleged case. 

Why, even former Vice President Mike Pence, who rebuffed Trump’s treasonable pence to subvert Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, has claimed docking a former US president — for the very first time — would send a wrong message to the world! 

Poor conflicted Pence!  The Trump-powered January 6, 2021 Capitol riot endangered him and his family.  Yet, the best he could out with is some cant about the global optics of docking Trump! The rest of the world are not so daft to not link Trump to his brazen lies and generally rotten conduct. 

Besides, isn’t America founded on laws again?  Or has that changed because it had a delinquent for president, who would rather play Samson and pull down the roof over everyone, because as an old man he regards power as a child covets lollipop, and would throw reckless tantrums than live with accepting he lost power, fair and square?

The rest of the world know Trump deserves what’s coming to him.  New York is first.  Georgia will soon follow — or didn’t he phone the Goergia Secretary of State (and state election czar) to help “find” votes to nullify Biden’s win?  Then, the Capitol riots, still under federal special investigations, after an exhaustive probe by Congress.

Trump should answer to any alleged offence.  Partisan sentiments can’t cripple the rule of law, especially at its high cathedral — or isn’t that how Americans flaunt their country?

Still, Hardball isn’t really interested in Trump and his comeuppance — good riddance!  It is rather interested in Nigeria’s reckless election denial wannabes, so deluded their childish tantrums could alter anything. 

In the saga of Trump, their tragically flawed patron saint, they should see the futility of their gambit, and what lay in store for them: fair and legitimate disgrace. 

He who does what no one did before would face novel consequences — no matter how nasty.

It’s an age-long maxim that two wrongs never add up to a right. But there are some wrongs that compel another wrong, though the compelled wrong is not for that reason justified. That was what played out in an incident that occurred in Delta State last week, if accounts by the state police command is to be believed.

A video clip went viral online at the weekend showing four police personnel treating a woman in a most dehumanising manner. That video showed the police agents, among them a policewoman, brutalising the woman who was on her knees and half naked, close by a police van onto which they wanted to bundle her but she stoutly resisted. The police agents tied her hands with a rope behind her and were dragging her, half naked as she was. The netizen who posted the clip online rightly made the comment that no one deserved to be treated that way, no matter the offence.

Delta police command saw the disturbing clip and moved to action. Early this week, the command condemned the conduct of its agents in the video and said it had arrested those involved for disciplinary measures. “After a careful examination of the video clip, it is clear and obvious that no citizen deserves to be treated in such a manner… The erring police officers serving at Agbarho division have been identified, summoned and detained at the command headquarters. Their act is not only inexcusable, but unpardonable and will not be tolerated by the command,” Command spokesman DSP Bright Edafe said inter alia in a statement.

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Two days later, Edafe returned with another clip showing how the earlier clip didn’t tell the whole story of what transpired. The command spokesman said: “On 22nd March 2023, one Thankgod James reported that the said woman smashed his vehicle windscreen and assaulted him. On the strength of this report, a policewoman was sent to invite her. The suspect became aggressive and assaulted the policewoman, tore her clothes. So the policewoman called for reinforcement. When the reinforcement arrived, the woman again poured a pot of soup on one of the policemen even while he was on uniform.” He attached the video clip illustrating his account, adding: “While condemning the actions of the policemen, and as the command has assured members of the public that they will be duly sanctioned, it’s also important for members of the public to behave themselves, and exercise restrains when interfacing with the police.”

If she did all she’s accused of, the ill-treated woman went overboard in her conduct. But the police command made the right call: those officers had no business staging a contest of beastly behaviour with her. they must face sanctions for their unprofessionalism.

Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga, last Monday, called for weekly nationwide protests in his country, ostensibly against prevailing high cost of living. He made the call was moments after the police fired tear gas and water cannons at his car as they blocked his supporters from entering a hotel in downtown Nairobi where he was billed to address a news conference.

The former prime minister arrowheads demonstrations against the sitting government of President William Ruto who assumed office in September, last year; and the police had blocked his car from accessing Nairobi’s central business district where protesters clashed with their men from Monday morning, forcing him to relocate to another area of the Kenyan capital. Following his loss for a fifth time in presidential polls last August, he has championed nationwide protests against what he claims, without proof, is an illegitimate government that stole the election.

Hundreds have been hitting the streets in the East African nation to protest high cost of daily life that the Ruto administration seems not to have a handle on. But truth also is that they’re driven by opposition instigation. During the showdown last Monday, the police arrested many protesters including senior opposition politicians as demonstrations escalated. The police clashed with the protesters in Nairobi’s city center with businesses in the city center shuttered for the day, and in Nairobi’s Kibera slum where Odinga has substantial support. Clashes were also reported in the city of Kisumu, in western Kenya, which is considered an Odinga stronghold.

What lessons are there to learn here? Under electoral democracy, contest for power must end when elections are called; and if an outcome gets challenged in court, when the court of final arbitration adjudicates on the matter. In Kenya, the presidential poll held on 9th August 2022, and the country’s Supreme Court ruled in early September affirming Ruto as having duly won. But Odinga’s opposition has not been appeased and he has carried on with extra-electoral and extra-judicial means of duelling for power, thereby setting himself up against law and order.

Politicians everywhere need to learn upfront the lesson Odinga and his supporters are learning with eyes bleary from police tear gas. In particular, with the 2023 Nigerian elections just ended, Nigerian politicians must come to terms with the fact of elections having been called; and if there’s any challenge, to take such for adjudication by the judiciary and abide by whatever the judiciary pronounces. Anything more will be inviting the hard hand of law enforcers.