Category: Hardball

Predictably, the alarming Kuje prison break is still very much in the news. The chairman of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Correctional Service, Edwin Anayo, said the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) had recaptured 421 inmates who fled the custodial facility in Kuje, but 454 were still at large.

During an oversight visit to the facility on July 14, he said the committee had summoned Minister of Interior Rauf Aregbesola and Comptroller-General of the NCoS Haliru Nababa to appear before it following the terrorist attack on the Kuje Custodial Centre, Abuja, on the night of July 5.  According to him, about 879 inmates escaped that night. The committee has also invited the Commander of the Nigerian Army Platoon on duty on the night of the attack, he added.

Many Boko Haram members were among the escapees.  The Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) claimed responsibility for the raid on the prison. The release of terrorists by terrorists is disturbing.

Anayo said: “There have been about 10 to 12 attacks on custodial centres. Nigerians are not comfortable.

“In Abuja, nobody walks freely now because of this incident. We have to interact and know the problems, and how we can solve them…The committee is eager to know what transpired here.”

Indeed, Nigerians want to know why the country’s prisons seem so vulnerable.  Contradictory responses from two ministers on the Kuje incident have not helped matters.  Police Affairs Minister Maigari Dingyadi said the defenders were overpowered because the attackers were more in number and better armed, while Aregbesola said the protectors were enough in number and adequately equipped.

Importantly, the military is investigating the incident.  A military source was quoted as saying: “An investigation has commenced to truly understand what happened.  It is not just because of the allegations against our soldiers after the attack that has made us do this, this is what we do when we find ourselves in a situation like this when we have our men involved.

“Those on duty that day have been invited for questioning. The military is a well-disciplined organisation; if anyone is found culpable after the investigation, they would be court-martialed.”

It is important to get to the root of the problem. But it is also important to ensure that the Kuje escapees are recaptured.  How many of the escapees in the previous incidents have been recaptured?

The Kuje escapees included terrorists, who should not be allowed to enjoy freedom. The other escapees should also be in prison. Recapturing all of them is as vital as knowing how they escaped.

The case of Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, aka Evans, already sentenced to life for kidnapping and conspiracy, is getting more interesting.  Evans, with co-felons, Uchenna Amadi and Okechukwu Nwachukwu, were jailed for kidnapping and extorting Donatus Duru, managing director of Maydon Pharmaceutical Ltd.

But no sooner was Evan thrown into the can than the victim, Donatus Duru, filed another civil suit to recover, from Evans, the £223, 000 ransom the kidnapper collected from his victim. 

Not only that: Duru is also demanding N50 million as damages, being 20 per cent interest on the ransom sum, for his odyssey which lasted from February 14 (ironically Valentine’s Day 2017!) and April 12 2017.  What irony!  Seizing someone with arch-malevolence on a day when the world celebrates love all over!

However the court decides the case, Duru would appear determined not to pull any punch to extract his pound of flesh, even as Evans is put where all felons belong — and for life too!  Hardball can’t blame him, given the trauma the victim had gone through.

Already, there appears no respite for Evans in his post-sentence troubles.  Aside from losing his freedom — the most fundamental of citizens’ rights perhaps only next to life itself — the judge presiding over the civil case has already fined Evans N2.5 million for failure to appear in court for the proceedings.

When he did, he warned that he would impose further costs on Evans should his absence from court cause the case to further drag on.  Yet, at the next hearing, Evans was still not there!  That forced Evans’ lawyer to plead with the court to order the Comptroller of Prisons to produce Evans at the next hearing.  Tough!

But then, one of Fela’s immortal lyrics drifts to your consciousness: “Trouble sleep, Yanga go wake am … Palaver you de find, Palaver you go get o …”

Evans wouldn’t be in this spot if he hadn’t done kidnapping in the first instance.  He did and got slammed in for his crime.  Now, even in jail, he risks coughing out cash to re-pay the ransom he collected — and with handsome interest on top!

Palaver you de find, palaver you go get ooooo …

Double jeopardy never sounded so rational and justifiable — and just as well!  That should be a grim lesson for those who luxuriate in crime!

As the campaigns for 2024 get to the brass tacks, and the PDP folks are getting really prickly over any distractions over Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and PDP’s umpteenth presidential candidate, you can’t both think of the tortoise in the Yoruba folktale and his criminal-minded in-law.

It was a market day, and folks bound for their daily business saw the rather strange sight of the tortoise bearing down on his in-law, in a merciless thrashing.

What might be the matter, they asked.  A furious tortoise growled that his in-law had stolen from him.  Beat him hard, they said as they departed.  But coming back in the evening, they saw the tortoise still thrashing his quarry.  Haba!  They protested.  You want to kill him?  What really did he steal to deserve such all-day pummelling?

That appears the new PDP response to Obasanjo’s eternal charge that Atiku was undeserving of high office.  The latest to show his irritation, among the PDP rank, was Sule Lamido, former governor of Jigawa State.

The near-bland Lamido but near all-season darling of Obasanjo thundered: “Obasanjo is a senior man, somebody who is elderly.  He has the right to talk down on his own children but that should be an in-house accusation.  He can say Atiku, you are this or that but when he says it publicly to the country he led, it is wrong,” he told Vanguard.

Then, he chipped in biting history: when Baba Iyabo was languishing in the Abacha gulag, Atiku and co were forming the PDP, the vehicle that propelled Obasanjo to the presidency!

The moral, just as it was with the tortoise and in-law: don’t dwell too much on stuff.  Have your say and move on!  That that curt message came from Alhaji Lamido, who shares mutual respect and admiration with Obasanjo, is instructive.  In Hardball’s umpteenth view, it’s the right call.

But the message here is not only for the former president.  It should decide the tone, now that campaigns are beginning full blast.

The 2023 electioneering should not be wasted on settling personal scores or ancestral feuds, or running rivals down.  Rather, it should be devoted to asking hard questions of candidates at all levels.

Each time the country arrives at this juncture, those who have little or nothing to offer often seize the loud megaphone and pump useless toxins into the air — toxins that distract from rational choices; but rather focus on inanities.

It really would be a relief if such useless noise ceases this time round.  Let everyone engage in issues-based campaigns, such that whoever wins would have committed himself or herself to some concrete policies and programmes, from which voters can extract fair and legitimate results.

That is the way to go, if elections were not to be some sterile cycles in winning or losing elections, by all means necessary.

There is a local axiom that when a man excreting in the bush squats too long in the act, he gets harassed by different species of flies. We also have the common saying that justice delayed oftentimes translates to justice denied. There’s a sense in which these axioms apply to the recent jailbreak at Kuje prison in Abuja in which suspected kidnap kingpin Hamisu Wadume reportedly sprung lose along with about 400 other inmates of the facility.

Following insurgents’ attack on the prison last Tuesday, about half of the inmate population, including suspected Boko Haramists, broke out from custody. Reports yet to be controverted listed Wadume, who has been in custody at Kuje prison since 2019, among escaped inmates who had neither been recaptured nor returned voluntarily to custody. Wadume was hunted down in Takum, Taraba State, for criminal activities by which he allegedly terrorised people of the area. His arrest by police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) personnel in an operation led by then unit head, DCP Abba Kyari, resulted in the killing of three IRT operatives in circumstances that reeked of conflicting purposes among security services, if not outright sabotage of one agency by the other.

Agents of IRT who arrested Wadume following painstaking track-down operation came under heavy fire by soldiers of 93 Battalion in Takum, which resulted in the killing of three police officers and one civilian, with five other operatives getting injured. That incident opened up bitter acrimony between the two security services. The military assault squad claimed the IRT officers were not properly identified and that their vehicle had nothing to show they were policemen. The soldiers, who also liberated Wadume from IRT operatives’ captivity, reportedly acted on superior orders. On the heels of the encounter, Wadume went on the run again, with his escape eliciting public outrage; he was however rearrested by IRT operatives in Kano, brought to Abuja and charged to court, which ordered his remand in prison custody. Against the backdrop of his daring exploits in evading arrest until then, the suspect was reported squealing on corrupt underbelly of the security services. Among others, he alleged that an army Captain and some other officers were on his payroll, and that he often paid his way with generous ‘tolls’ at checkpoints en route to his hideout.

The wheel of justice that grinds slowly saw to it that Wadume was yet to be convicted as at when he broke lose from custody last week. Now that he has to be recaptured, we must hope this would not be at high costs in lives and service morality like his previous arrest entailed.

Among the Yoruba, maybe other Nigerian tongues too, there’s a saying you do not expect to see the sacred masquerade making an outing in broad daylight. If you do, you could readily deduce there was some dislocation in the spirit world that roused the masquerade out of habit. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is a ‘sacred masquerade’ by many standards,’ but when you see him in metaphorical broad daylight, it isn’t an indication of any dislocation in the spirit world but only that he is an arch-symbolist.

In 1976 as military ruler, he inaugurated pet project ‘Operation Feed the Nation’ by personally hoeing a green area around Dodan Barracks, the then seat of power in Lagos, to nudge Nigerians onto cultivating arable strips around their houses towards stimulating food production on concerted scale. An iconic picture of the head of state in faded farm wear with a hoe hoisted on his shoulder was emblematic of that back-to-land crusade. There’s a new iconic shot of the leader who served as elected president from 1999 to 2007. Now at 85 years, he was last weekend pictured operating commercial tricycle, commonly known as ‘Keke,’ and rendering commuter service to a resident of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

Residents of the capital city watched in disbelief as they saw the ex-president riding Keke. The octogenarian rode the tricycle from the premises of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) through Kuto under bridge amidst cheers by onlookers, stopping along the route to pick a male passenger. Speaking after returning to OOPL premises, Obasanjo said he undertook the tricycle ride to demonstrate that there is nothing demeaning in riding Keke and using same for commercial purpose, and that tricycle is a safe means of transportation if used properly. He explained that it would ease unemployment rate if young people learn to start small and grow their craft, adding that with tricycles and other small scale businesses, youths can be self-employed and become economically independent. Recalling that he got negative feedbacks after he gave out 85 tricycles recently to youngsters to mark his 85th birthday anniversary, Obasanjo said,  “There is nothing wrong in young people starting small… You can plan your business the way you wish and earn income that you can deploy to other investments. And if you are able to get a second one, you can give that to someone else. So, you become self-employed and you have also employed somebody.”

The former president’s objective with the Keke ride is noble and commendable. But isn’t it overly challenging nature for an 85-year-old to operate  commuter service with tricycle on a busy urban highway?

It was a preventable tragedy. This is an unavoidable conclusion based on information provided by the Lagos State government, even though investigation of the incident is ongoing.

The government has closed Redeemers Nursery and Primary School, Ogba, owned by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), following the drowning of a five-year-old pupil, Chidere Eze. The boy was said to have drowned during a swimming lesson, in May, organised by the school at Ivory Health Club, Ogundana Street, Ikeja. About 15 pupils were said to have participated in the activity.

There are disturbing allegations, including that the pupils were taken to the facility’s adult pool, and that the teachers, caregivers and lifeguards were unaware that the child had drowned. Little Chidere’s father was quoted as saying his son had struggled under the water for more than 30 minutes without getting any help before he tragically died.

A statement signed by the Commissioner for Education, Folasade Adefisayo, said the school had been closed “pending an administrative investigation of its operations and procedures as well as the conduct of its officials – in line with schools’ safety standards and guidelines.”

It also said:  “A preliminary probe by the Office of Education Quality Assurance of the Ministry has shown that the Redeemers Nursery and Primary School, Ogba, is yet to conclude its registration and is, therefore, not yet an approved school.”

Importantly, the commissioner added that “the school will remain closed until all the required approval processes are concluded.”

This is why the death was preventable. If the school was not operating, it could not have organised the activity that allegedly caused the boy’s death.

The question is: Why was a yet-to-be-approved school allowed to operate? The authorities should have ensured that the school did not operate while approval was being processed.

The school administration certainly needs to answer some questions, in particular why the school had operated without government approval. This incident gives the RCCG, which owns the school, a bad image.

The Pentecostal megachurch with headquarters in Lagos ranks among the biggest Pentecostal churches. As at 2017, it reportedly had branches in more than 100 countries. A church with such an impressive profile needs to pay attention to its image.

The school is blameworthy for operating without approval. But so is the education ministry for allowing it to do so before the tragedy occurred.

Are there other private schools operating without approval in the state? What is the government doing about such schools? The authorities should not wait until something bad happens before enforcing standards.