Category: Hardball

Oddly, the Nigerian Senate is chasing shadows regarding kidnapping, banditry and terrorism, with the amendment to Terrorism (Prevention) Act, 2013, which seeks to outlaw the payment of ransom to abductors and terrorists for the release of any person who has been wrongfully confined, imprisoned or kidnapped.

The amendment bill was finally passed on April 27 after the Senate had considered a report of the Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters. The chairman of the committee, Opeyemi Bamidele (All Progressives Congress (APC), Ekiti Central), said “the overall import of this bill is to discourage the rising spate of kidnapping and abduction for ransom in Nigeria, which is fast spreading across the country.” It would be sent to the House of Representatives for concurrence and then to the president for assent.

So what should the families of kidnap victims do when kidnappers demand ransom? The Senate needs to answer this question. It isn’t enough to prohibit payment of ransom.  The bill denies the right of families to try to save the lives of their members when they are unfortunately kidnapped for ransom by paying the kidnappers.  It is unjustifiable.

True, not all kidnap cases end in the release of the victims after payment of ransom. Some kidnap victims lose their lives in captivity, despite the payment of ransom. But cases in which the victims are freed after payment of ransom show that it can achieve the desired result, which is freedom for the captives.

If kidnapping for ransom is thriving because the authorities responsible for security and development are underperforming, who is to blame?  Ransom payers are not to blame for the evil business, but the structures of power that seem powerless against kidnappers and have failed to improve socio-economic conditions.

According to a study, more than $18 million was paid as ransom to kidnappers in the country from 2011 to 2020, and the greater part of the payment was from 2016 to 2020 when about $11 million was paid. In the local currency, these are huge figures indeed, showing that kidnapping for ransom is thriving.

Senate President Ahmad Lawan sounded like a dreamy joker when he said the bill “by the time signed into an Act by Mr. President, will enhance the efforts of this government in the fight against terrorism, kidnapping, and other associated and related vices.

“This is one piece of legislation that can turn around not only the security situation in Nigeria, but even the economic fortunes of our country.”

Apart from the issue of state incapacity, which encourages ransom payment in kidnap cases, there is the question whether the bill is enforceable. Ultimately, this is an exercise in futility.

A professed clergyman, Pastor Noah Abraham who founded the Christ High Commission Ministry, lately hit the news for camping about 40 members of his flock in purported preparation for their translocation to heaven. He had charged them N310,000 as fare, and is camping them pending ‘rapture’ on remote premises within a walled-up compound housing his church in Araromi-Ugbesi, Omuo-Oke-Ekiti in Ekiti East council area of Ekiti State.

Reports said Abraham had operated his church, also known as Royal Christ Assembly, in Kaduna State since 2009 before relocating base to Araromi-Ugbesi, his native town, in 2020. He recently returned to Kaduna to ask members to each pay N310,000 if they would follow him to Omuo-Oke-Ekiti, where “the gate of heaven” will soon open for them to ascend into. Members who believed him included those who sold their belongings to raise the fare and abandoned kith and kin that had refused to join them. Accessed WhatsApp messages revealed some members pressuring their wards resident abroad to urgently return for the ‘end-time flight’ lest they get enchanted into trouble in their respective base by ‘Father Abraham.’ People at the camp included secondary and university students who have resolved not to return to school because they are awaiting ‘rapture’, according to relations. Because of the way he camped members,  some relations accused him of abduction.

It was reportedly an aggrieved relation who exposed the church. The former member of the Kaduna branch called in the police to help secure the release of his wife and three children who headed to the camp without his consent. He had gone to withdraw them himself, but the wife refused returning after nearly three weeks at the camp; he managed to retrieve the children though. Another relation was reported saying his brother-in-law sold off his belongings and took the proceeds to the pastor, asking his wife (the man’s sister) to forget their 21-year-old marriage since she refused to follow him. Interestingly, Abraham’s wife does not live with him at the camp but stays in Kabba, Kogi State.

The Omuo-Ekiti camp has all the making of erstwhile Jim Jones’s camp in Guyana and David Koresh’s commune in Waco, Texas, both of which ended in mass suicide of deluded campers. The police have moved in on Pastor Abraham, but are apparently hamstrung because his members are ‘voluntarily’ camping according to reports. Well, mass enchantment is sufficient violation on which to hold the professed cleric before he enacts a ‘Guyana Tragedy’ here.

Might Nick Parish, British MP, be dreaming a pornographic parish in the House of Commons, as he savoured x-rated stuff with the Commons in session?

Perish that satanic pun! But a snappy bit of e-voyeurism just cost poor Mr. Parish dear!  Outrage from fellow Tories, at his pleasurable indiscretion, has forced him to give up his seat, after 12 years.  He first won his seat in 2010.

Mr. Parish, who won his Devon constituency seat with a thumping 24, 239-vote drubbing of his Labour Party opponent in the 2019 general election, pleaded he wasn’t quite the devil folks were screaming should be nailed to the cross.

He explained his first porn sortie was completely accidental.  He stumbled on those porn sites en route to looking for tractors on a website.  It offered some brief but sweet detour.  It must have been porn — sorry fun — while it lasted!

But the fatal encore was another experience entirely, what Mr. Parish himself would dub “a moment of madness.”  It probably wouldn’t have made any news — a 65-year-old viewing porn on his private cell phone — if a female co-Commons had not stumbled on the man and raised alarm.

Things were not helped by Mr. Parish’s initial bluff to hang on to his seat as Parliament investigated his shocking conduct, which the women’s rights lobby had latched onto as umpteenth proof of male chauvinism, which degraded the hallowed chamber to some hollow gender pigsty.  It was then the dam broke.

“In the end,” Mr. Parish confessed, “I could see that the furore erupted and the damage I was causing my family and my constituency association.  It just wasn’t worth carrying on,” he told the BBC.

He pummelled himself for the sweet but crippling encore: “But my crime, the biggest crime is that on another occasion I went in a second time and that was deliberate. I was sitting waiting to vote on the side of the chamber.”  Be wary of catching discreet fun on the sidelines!

The moral?  A sane society is built on a strong moral fibre.  If it were here, hustler lawyers and media spinners would deadpan that MP Parish had committed no listed crime.  Yet, in their heart of hearts, they would flinch at his indecent conduct.

In Mr. Parish’s noble step-down, you could see why British democracy still thrives, with the first English Parliament convened in 1215, when the Magna Carta was created and signed.

This is an apt time to look back at some of the things former Ekiti State governor Ayo Fayose did in power, and some of the things he did with power. A presidential aspirant in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he was reported saying he would appoint a “Minster of Stomach Infrastructure” if elected president in 2023.

He told journalists, on April 29, after a session with the party’s Presidential Screening Committee in Abuja:  “I made it clear that I will have a minister for stomach infrastructure and welfare of the people.”

He offered an explanation, saying “For me, stomach infrastructure is part of being supportive of the ordinary Nigerian. Stomach infrastructure under my watch as president of Nigeria will be a major theme.

“No one is saying here that you will not do the needful in terms of developing the country, part of development is the welfare and well-being of the people.”

He had introduced the picturesque phrase “stomach infrastructure” when he came to power in 2014, emphasising that “putting food inside this stomach is very important.” Among his first appointments at the time was a “personal assistant on special duties and stomach infrastructure.”

In 2015, he made a fashion statement and a power statement at the Ekiti State House of Assembly when he appeared to present the Appropriation Bill dressed in a pair of Jeans trousers and a T-shirt, going against the idea of “dressing properly for the occasion.”

On the same occasion, he grabbed the gavel and employed it to “pass” the budget he had presented into law, which was an absurd violation of the concept and practice of separation of powers.

In 2017, with Christmas just around the corner, he played Father Christmas, announcing that he would buy Christmas clothes for 10,000 children “as a mark of showing Ekiti children love to partake in the sharing of the state’s wealth.”

At the time the main opposition party reminded him that his administration owed “eight to nine months’ salary and pensions’ arrears,” and accused him of “buying cheap clothes at exorbitant costs, more than half of which will end up in private pockets.”

In 2018, while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prepared to officially announce the governorship election result in the state, Fayose, the outgoing governor, illegally and incorrectly announced on the Ekiti State Broadcasting Service (EKBS) that the PDP candidate had won.

His plan to reintroduce “stomach infrastructure” if he becomes president shows that he has not realised that distributing free food to the people is a no-brainer compared with creating an enabling environment, through development, where the people do not need free food from the government.

Code of Conduct Tribunal Chairman Danladi Umar is running, but he isn’t finding a place to hide. He is running from being called to account for alleged brutalisation of a security guard at Banex Plaza, Abuja, in March 2021 over which the Senate moved to investigate him. Rather than defend himself against the charge, Umar headed to court to stop the red chamber from probing the allegation; but the solace he sought from the judiciary was denied him last week.

The Federal High Court in Abuja, on Tuesday, ordered the tribunal judge to submit to Senate probe into allegations of misconduct brought against him. Justice Inyang Ekwo, giving judgment in Umar’s suit challenging the powers of the Senate to investigate the security guard’s complaints, dismissed the suit as lacking merit because Umar had no cogent reason to stop the chamber from performing its constitutional functions. Justice Ekwo held that Sections 88 and 89 of the 1999 Constitution under which the CCT chair sought to be protected did not confer protection or refuge on him. He added that as a public officer administering law relating to conduct by public officers, Umar had no reason to stop the Senate from probing a public petition seeking justice. According to the judge, the Code of Conduct Bureau and Code of Conduct Tribunal Act 2010 is an Act of the National Assembly and, as such, Umar is subject to investigation by that NASS. He further said Section 2 of the Act exposed Umar to investigation by the NASS more than any other Nigerian, and that his bid to stop the Senate probe “gives an impression that he is above the law.”

One had thought these were obvious points the CCT chair should have foreseen, being a judge himself. Clement Sagwak had petitioned the Senate to seek justice over alleged assault on him by Umar and his police orderly while undergoing his lawful duty as a security guard at Banex Plaza where he had notified the tribunal judge that his car was wrongly parked. On 4th May, 2021, Justice Umar appeared before the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition and asked for a week to study the petition, and the panel gave him two weeks. But rather than return before the panel to defend himself, he headed to court seek perpetual injunction restraining the Senate from investigating him. Well, let him run, but he can’t hide.

Executed robber barons, “Dr.” Isola Oyenusi and Babatunde Folorunso, belonged to Nigeria’s immediate post-Civil War paradise lost, when armed robbery and sundry violent crimes crept into Lagos and other urban centres, in the early 1970s.

The likes of Lawrence Anini and Monday Osunbor, an ex-cop turned dirty, aiding and abetting the Anini gang tormenting the Edo-Delta sector during the Babangida military regime, belonged to later generations of these despicable gangs.

Indeed, at the earliest stages of armed robbery, a troubled teenage Hardball would wonder why a “whole” doctor would go do crime, when by training he was made for life!  In his age of innocence, he didn’t realize it was criminal Oyenusi who was fantasizing decent, crime-free living!

The reverse would appear the case now, without falling into the fallacy of over-generalization.  According to an April 28 story in The Nation, three teenage robbery suspects, in Ijare near Akure, Ondo State, are already fancying themselves in the big, rotten shoes of the old masters!

One, Timilehin Femi, 13, dubs himself “Anini” and is widely so-called!  A mere 13-year- old dreaming big rotten dreams!  Another, Ojo Sunday, proudly flaunts the moniker of “Oyenusi”.  A third, neither name nor age given in the story, calls himself “Monday Osunbor”.  What a vile trinity!  And what vile crime research fetched them those names?

Worse: Kehinde Ayodele and Iyabo Femi, mothers of two of the suspects, are alleged to make charms to protect their children against police arrest, as they embarked on their robbery jaunts in the Akure metropolis — to come back home to share robbery spoils with darling mums?  Stranger than fiction!

It’s good that the police have nabbed these suspects, even if it is depressing that kids at such tender ages and some worthless parents could dream of life of high crimes; and expect to live merrily ever-after, as in the fairy tales.

Beyond crime and punishment, the immediate challenge is to reform and wean these under-aged kids from crime while throwing in the can, their nabbed conspiratorial mothers, where they belong — if the allegations are proven in court.

But how has value rapidly collapsed in contemporary Nigeria!  That’s the depressing query — and it’s for clerics: Christian, Muslim and even traditional worshippers, aside from parents.

For the clerics, this is one heavy cross they must bear and make good.  They must recognize and accept the moral crisis as own failures.  So, far from the celebrated seasons of pointing fingers at the government, they must also sit down and do their work, of re-inculcating edifying morals.

Faced with public outrage, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration is struggling to defend the presidential pardon granted to ex- governor of Taraba State Rev. Jolly Nyame, 66, and ex-governor of Plateau State Senator Joshua Dariye, 64. They were two-term governors from 1999 to 2007.

Nyame was serving a 12-year jail term, and Dariye was serving a 10-year jail term.  “Both men were jailed for criminal misappropriation, diversion of public funds, and criminal breach of public trust and misappropriation of public funds,” the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had said in a statement.

They were not expected to be set loose without completing their prison terms. The unexpected happened when the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, announced that the president had granted pardon and clemency to 159 convicts based on the approval of the Council of State following recommendations of the  Presidential Advisory Committee on Prerogative of Mercy.

Nyame and Dariye were listed among those pardoned. Since the development on April 14, the Federal Government has faced intense public criticism with many Nigerians calling the pardon of the ex-governors unpardonable.

The presidential spokesmen, Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina, have struggled to defend the government’s action.  Shehu argued that “the president would have come across as insensitive were he to have ignored compelling cases recommended for pardon because someone is a former governor.”  Adesina explained that “The reasons adduced for those two former governors were age and severe ill health.”

The two ex-governors, in their sixties, are not too old to be in prison. So age is a non-issue. When convicts are ill or in poor health, the prison authorities and, by extension, the government should be responsible for their treatment. Or such convicts should receive treatment not as free men but as prisoners.  So freeing prisoners ostensibly to allow them seek treatment contradicts their imprisonment.

Curiously, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), also defended the pardon of the ex-governors. “If someone is incarcerated and serves four years out of a 10-year term, I think justice would have been served to a reasonable extent,” he argued.  This is an unreasonable argument, which should not be associated with someone who is supposed to be helping to fight corruption.

It is strange that the defenders of the indefensible pardon of Nyame and Dariye fail to see that it is ultimately counter-productive. It sends the wrong message to those who occupy high office that corruption-related imprisonment is not to be taken seriously, and can always be cancelled by the powers that be.

The Buhari administration boasts that it is waging a war against corruption. The corruption-friendly pardon has exposed the so-called war as a lie.

Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle is in patronal mood. His administration has just sent 97 clerics to Saudi Arabia on lesser Hajj to “pray for stoppage of banditry” in the state. The clerics were mandated to engage in dedicated prayers at strategic holy sites of Makkah and Madina for peace in Zamfara and Nigeria as a whole. Deputy Governor Hassan Nasiha said it was part of strategies to restore peace and security in the state.

At the clerics’ departure last week, the deputy governor admonished them to put the state and its people in prayers in the hope that God would bring an end to multiple problems besetting the state and the entire nation. Also speaking at the departure, a cleric, Dr. Atiku Balarabe, advised the pilgrims to concentrate on worship and prayers in Saudi Arabia and seek God’s intervention to bring an end to banditry and other crimes in the state.

Earlier in the month, the Zamfara government gifted 260 Cadillac 2019 model cars to traditional rulers and commissioned an “ultra-modern headquarters” of the state council of Ulama. A statement by the government said the gesture was in recognition of traditional institutions as “custodians of our religion and culture and vehicle of cohesion and peace in our societies.” It further quoted the governor as saying: “It is in view of the high esteem with which my administration regards our traditional leaders and institutions that we decided to procure brand new cars – Cadillac 2019 model – for 17 emirs, 13 senior district heads and 230 district heads across the state.”

The governor’s largesse is obviously part of his government’s non-kinetic approach to dealing with the insecurity hobbling his state, especially in a society where some community leaders have come under suspicion of abetting terrorists. Only that care must be taken not to leave the substance and pursue shadows, in the manner of that popular maxim (among the Yoruba, if not other tongues) about ignoring leprosy and lavishing attention on curing eczema. We are a deeply religious people in Nigeria and tend to pray for spiritual solution to issues that require practical proactive efforts. Alleviating insecurity in Zamfara State, as any other area, is more a function of waging ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ wars against terrorists, and that includes ensuring socio-economic wellbeing of the general citizenry as would make them naturally intolerant of harbouring troublemakers. Much of the resources being lavished on patronages can be applied to such wars.

Lawyers talk of “probative” value, when x-raying the weight of evidence.  So, it’s not just tendering any evidence before the court; for you to win, the evidence must have high probative value.

That really should be a news function too.  It’s not just any screech you’ll run with for “breaking news” — and to some extent that is so.  But in this era of blind sensationalism, you can’t just assume that as given.

In the clamour for the PDP presidential ticket, Dr. Bukola Saraki, with three others, pushed for a consensus “northern” candidate, to tango with others for the PDP ticket.

In due course, Prof. Ango Abdullahi, convener of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), would  reveal himself as the high priest of this “northern” consensus, in its innermost sanctum.  He signed a statement claiming that after consulting with former military junta chief, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (the sanctum’s innermost oracle-in-chief?), the process had thrown up both Saraki and sitting Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed.

No sweat.  It’s a democracy.  It’s all legitimate.  Yet, you wonder if Prof. Abdullahi’s consensus processing was for PDP or for his NEF pressure group?

Unlike its rival but always more restrained Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), the NEF is fast developing a culture of sensational screeches, while reacting to national crises and sundry national issues.  The other day, the NEF told President Muhammadu Buhari to resign on account of the insecurity question, harvesting plaudits from the starry-eyed.

But the snag is on whose behalf was Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, the NEF person that made that call, speaking: the NEF or the PDP?

Another legit question: on whose behalf was Prof. Ango Abdullahi working the “northern” consensus option: PDP or NEF?

Clearly stung by this quandary, Dr. Baba-Ahmed has disowned the process, calling it some NEF members’ private, legitimate forays.  But Paul Unongo, another NEF member, promptly countered, claiming NEF was in the PDP consensus experiment body and soul!

So guys, when next NEF releases its thunderous stuff, just ask before you rush to the press, screaming “Breaking News!”: who is speaking — NEF or PDP?  Talk of news “probative value”!

That way, at least you’d distinguish between the outrage of really concerned citizens,  against smart Alec politicians just hiding behind pressure groups to ventilate partisan gloats in periods of acute national stress and emergency.