The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Mob justice in police’s face

    Mob justice in police’s face

    Two suspected ritualists allegedly caught with fresh human parts were last weekend burnt to death by an angry mob on the grounds of a police station in Oja Odan, Yewa-North council area of Ogun State. The victims were suspects of a vicious activity that has become a deadly menace spiralling out of control, especially in the Southwest areas, but the jungle justice dealt them on police premises marked the height of impotence of law and order in the face of self-help.

    Reports said the two suspects were earlier caught with a human head by youths of Oja Odan, following which the police took them over and away into detention. But upon news spreading in the town about the suspects being held by the police, an irate mob shortly after stormed the police station in a large number and demanded that they be handed over for summary justice. Police personnel at the station naturally declined that request, but the mob broke into the police facility, dragged out the suspected ritualists and set them ablaze on an open space in front of the police station. Pictures posted in the media and said to be from the incident showed a crowd gathered, with hideous composure, around the ashes of the lynched suspects and tyres used in aiding their incineration – on police grounds! The police subsequently confirmed and condemned the incident, saying the mob overwhelmed police personnel at the station, then seized the suspects while they were being interrogated. Police authorities have ordered a probe of the incident and warned that jungle justice has no place in Nigerian laws.

    The festering menace of ritualists no doubt constitutes provocation to communities that bear the brunt of the killer trade, but no provocation is sufficient to justify jungle justice. And it is disturbing that the police claimed helplessness in a situation they could have put up minimal efforts to head off: perhaps they implicitly considered the mob justice deserved comeuppance for the suspected ritualists. The appearance of the police on the scene used to be like a nail in the balloon of jungle justice, unlike in Oja Odan where jungle justice was dealt under the police’s nose. The incident is amenable to diverse scenario casting. If there were other detainees at that police facility, the invading mob could have pulled out and handed down jungle justice to the wrong suspects before the error is realised. Even with the suspects rightly identified, it was sheer miscarriage of justice that they were denied the opportunity to state their case and be duly convicted of the crime they were suspected of. And the police couldn’t have been utterly helpless. If they couldn’t stop the mob from breaking into the station to seize the suspects, they could have fired in the air to scare off the mobsters as they prepped the suspects for lynching. Nigeria being a civilised society, we must not succumb to brute instincts no matter the provocation.

  • Poverty virus

    Poverty virus

    It is bad news that the number of poor Nigerians has increased to 91 million. “The World Bank estimates that an additional one million people were pushed into poverty in Nigeria between June and November 2021, resulting in a total of about eight million people being relinquished to poverty in 2021; and bringing our nation’s poverty headcount to about 91 million,” Chairman of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), Asue Ighodalo, lamented.”That is 91 million Nigerians afflicted by the ‘poverty virus,’ which is every bit as deadly and more infectious than SARS, COVID-19, judging by the numbers,” he added.Considering that Nigeria’s population is about 214 million, the stated number of the country’s poor is indeed considerable.

    The news was food for thought at the launch of the 2022 Macroeconomic Outlook Report in Abuja on January 25. The focus was on reforms towards significant improvement in national economic outcomes.It is noteworthy that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in May 2020, said more than 83 million Nigerians were poor. This figure is from its 2019 report on poverty and inequality in Nigeria.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, in his national address following the 2020 #EndSARS protests and the resulting anarchy, had boasted that “No Nigerian government in the past has methodically and seriously approached poverty-alleviation like we have done.”But there are still too many millions of poor Nigerians. This suggests that his administration has not done enough, and needs to do much more, to tackle mass poverty.Also, in September 2020, when Buhari inaugurated a National Steering Committee to oversee the development of the ‘Nigeria Agenda 2050 and Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP),’ he mentioned the objective of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty “within the next 10 years.” Lamentably, the current figure does not show a reduction in the number of poor Nigerians but a disturbing rise.It is useful to identify the markers of poverty. The United Nations (UN) defines extreme poverty as “a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services.”

    The issues that need to be addressed in fighting poverty in the country are clear enough.  If the poverty problem worsens, the country should expect a worsening of the problems caused by poverty. Nigeria cannot afford to allow uncontrolled spread of the ‘poverty virus.’

     

  • Teachers or slayers?

    Teachers or slayers?

    Imagine a mother, in concert with her son, beat a 19-month old to death, just because that ill-fated child was a pupil of a child-slaying centre, masquerading as school?

    Stranger than fiction?  Well, that’s the ugly tale oozing out of Asaba, Delta State, like rich rot from a septic tank.

    By a story which The Nation published on February 14, headlined “19-month-old flogged to death in Delta”, one Emeka Joshua Nwogbo allegedly thrashed Obinna Adeze, the 19-month-old, with 31 strokes.  Poor Obinna reportedly slipped into a coma, never again to regain his life!

    If the final assault was shocking, the build-up was just as heart-rending.  Can you imagine mother and child — the one, the school owner; the other, her teacher-son — forming a tag-team to snuff life out of the child of another mother, put in their care?

    Hardball quotes verbatim The Nation reportage:  “The toddler was tied hand and foot by the school owner and her son before flogging him into a coma, Omejalile said, quoting the toddler’s mother.”

    Ebenezer Omejalile is chief operating officer of Advocates for Children and Vulnerable People’s Network, a child rights lobby.  Arise and Shine Nursery and Primary School, Asaba, is the name of the school.

    Obinna’s “capital crime”?  Splashing water all over his body, thus becoming wet!  Pray, which tot ever resists fun play with water?  And which parents beat their tot to death just because of that?

    This is all stranger than fiction!  But the roiling tragedy remains: a toddler — all innocent and sinless — is dead, needless victim of those paid to protect him. Someone must pay for this crime — and fast!

    Well, the tragedy of Arise and Shine, which could well have turned “Assault and Slay”, could truly have been an accident.  Both Nwogbo and proprietress-mum couldn’t have deliberately set out to kill a toddler in their care.

    But tanning a 19-month-old 31 strokes, with both hands and feet bound, spoke of murderous recklessness, disguised as discipline.  It also speaks of a school’s savage culture, which perhaps had gone on for too long, before something terrible gave.

    All those involved must get what they deserve.  There must be justice for Obinna.

    But beyond crime and punishment, how come the Delta State monitoring regime of private schools is so lax that such an outrage is even contemplated, talk less of actually happening?  The state government should ramp up its school monitoring processes; and rid schools of killers disguising as teachers.

    But for parents too, some cold query: why despatch a 19-month-old to school?  Isn’t a child expected to enjoy the paradise of infancy before enduring life’s hurly-burly?

    Poor Obinna would perhaps still be alive today had his parents not prematurely — for whatever reasons, including dire economic ones — despatched him to school.  Clearly, there’s more to life than earning a living? Obinna’s death reinforces that sad point.

  • Stockholm syndrome and the Bethel abductee

    Stockholm syndrome and the Bethel abductee

    The only pupil yet to be free out of 121 pupils kidnapped by bandits from Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna State is unwilling to return home. So says the Chairman of the Kaduna State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and spokesman on the abduction saga, Rev. Joseph Hayab. The 121 Bethel students were kidnapped on 5th July, 2021, from the school premises on the Kaduna-Kachia highway, Damishi in the Chikun council area, but 120 have been released following ransom payment avowedly to the tune of N250million by the Nigerian Baptist Convention (NBC), the school’s proprietor.

    Hayab, who is also Vice-Chairman of CAN in the North and Abuja, told journalists last week that the youngest among the Bethel abductees who is the only one yet to regain freedom prefers staying with his abductors. He said: “It puzzled the entire Baptist family and indeed CAN. The bandits were said to be showering the boy with gifts each time they went out and come back from operations, thereby making him reject the offer of freedom… Anytime they go out and come back, they pick him out among the rest and give him many things, and then he starts acting funny. If they tell him to go home, he would say he was not going and give some flimsy excuses that his parents used to beat him at home.” Hayab added that in the resolve to rescue the boy, further complications have arisen. “The man who has been helping us to deliver the money all this while went to deliver the money to free this boy they were confusing, and they kidnapped him. The man is with them as I speak now,” he explained.

    It stands to reason why the boy’s reported behaviour is puzzling, but he may need urgent medical help because he may have contracted the Stockholm syndrome, which is a rare psychological condition by which a victim identifies and empathises with his abusers and their goals. Scientific study showed this condition occurs in about eight percent of hostage victims. The boy’s stated condition is the more reason he needs help, and it shouldn’t be left to CAN or the Baptist Convention alone to get him that help. In January, the Convention said it took to self-help by paying ransom when help wasn’t forthcoming from government to rescue the pupils and the bandits threatened to start killing them one by one. Now it is obvious that option isn’t hazards-free, given the extortionist motive of the bandits that made them seize the ransom courier, apparently for fresh ransom demand that would be met only at the risk of the next courier being abducted for another ransom bargain. Government mustn’t leave kidnap victims and their relations to sort themselves out because there won’t be an end to the extortion by bandits. The Bethel pupil and other kidnap victims must be rescued.

  • ASUU and strike bug

    ASUU and strike bug

    That the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has a strike bug is clear.  Each time an ASUU president emerges, he probably develops a complex to stage his or her own strike, in the tradition of “my strike is bigger than yours”.  That seems to confirm the new helmsman’s Aluta essence.

    Might that be what new ASUU President, Prof. Victor Osodeke is doing, with the latest threats of ASUU to go on strike yet again?  Well, who knows? Prof. Osodeke was voted ASUU president on 30 May 2021.

    But doctrinaire ASUU, comrade-veterans and unfazed heroes of past paralyzing strikes, would sizzle at any suggestion that their strikes are anything but noble or patriotic.

    Yet, you could not help but see ASUU and strike exertions in the guise of crying wolf.  In this case, it’s not as if there are no wolves — there are.  The universities should be in better shape — no question about that.

    But the snag is that strikes, as a corrective and interventionist tool, appear to have gone past their potency.  So, each time ASUU belches “strike” now, folks just yawn, long, jeering and contemptuous, giving the impression that the nuisance is here again!  Pray, is that not near-tantamount to crying wolf when there is none?

    ASUU itself is getting the message.  A few days ago, a cross-religious lobby took the ASUU case to President Muhammadu Buhari.  The president said his government was committed to honouring its agreements with ASUU.  But ASUU itself should be sensitive to the current economic bind, since everything has to do with dwindling resources — hardly an unreasonable response.

    A few days after, however, ASUU was back at its old hobby — strikes and threat of strikes.  But perhaps to manifest its progressive impotence, ASUU lamented, at least as captured by a Nigerian Tribune headline, how the Federal Government was “dribbling” the union.

    But Chris Ngige, Labour and Employment minister riposted, as quoted by The Nation, by accusing ASUU of “blackmail”, and for allegedly spewing more sentiments than plain truth.

    Though both remain in the realm of claims and counter-claims, it is clearly a notorious fact that ASUU’s hitherto high moral ground is all but diminished; and it is forced to scream and screech in the public space, not assured of overwhelming support from any of its hitherto besotted publics: the students, their parents, ASUU members themselves beyond the Aluta gang, critical section of the media and the general public.

    What’s that about the insanity of doing the same thing and yet expecting a different result?  That describes ASUU and its perennial strikes.  ASUU, as eggheads, should learn to think out of the box.  But when its set formula is strikes and more strikes, that does grave damage to its brand equity as Nigeria’s prime intellect.

    ASUU should move to a new era.  The threats of strikes and more strikes reduce its thinking and reasoning capacity.  That is a huge but self-inflicted shame on our preening university teachers.

  • Wedding largesse in Zamfara

    Wedding largesse in Zamfara

    Zamfara State Hotels and Tourism Commissioner Abubakar Abdullahi was reported to have early this week wedded 20 orphans as a gesture of his philanthropy. He as well empowered 600 youths and women across the 11 wards of Tsafe council area of the state. The wedding and empowerment programme was said to have held on Sunday in Tsafe town.

    Reports cited Abdullahi, at the occasion, pledging to sponsor the education of 10 more orphans from primary school to the university. He said his decision was warranted by activities of bandits and other criminals that had caused many people in the state hardship. “It is our responsibility as leaders to provide all necessary support that can make life comfortable to our people,” he stated, explaining that the 600 youths and women being empowered would receive N20,000 each to start their businesses in the hope that this would make them self-reliant and enable them to contribute their quota to the development of the state. In furtherance of his philanthropy, the commissioner also handed out 14 cars, 600 motorcycles and 100 sewing machines to community leaders and political associates in the council area. Zamfara State Governor Bello Matawalle, who was represented at occasion by House of Assembly Speaker Nasiru Magarya, said Abdullahi exhibited the true spirit of leadership that should be emulated by other politicians in the state. The chairman of the event’s planning committee, Buhari Kaura, also explained that Abdullahi decided to wed the orphans and empower other beneficiaries owing to his concern over how humanitarian crises in the area had exposed many citizens to economic hardship.

    Generosity of any kind is a gracious act that should be commended, and the Zamfara commissioner’s motivation for wedding 20 orphans as part of his gesture of philanthropy apparently is to provide them social security in marital context. But the implied commoditisation of the womenfolk sucks. Besides, couldn’t Abdullahi have helped those orphans without constituting them into a consolidated harem, like empowering them just as he did the 600 youths and women who also featured on his plate of munificence? For one, it is debatable how much self-developing attention the orphans will respectively get in the harem context. More dicey is the implication of marital obligations within that context for the collective health of this country population wise. Only last week, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the Revised National Policy on Population for Sustainable Development, stressing the need for urgent measures to address Nigeria’s high fertility rate “through expanding access to modern family planning, counselling and commodities, as well as promote birth spacing. This will enable Nigeria to achieve rapid fertility control, improve the health of women, adolescents, new born and children and other population groups,” he was reported to have said. It is doubtful this objective works in the context of a consolidated harem, meaning Abdullahi didn’t offer leadership in that regard.

  • I.E: of rare and real apologies

    I.E: of rare and real apologies

    These past days, Ikeja Electric (I.E.) has been dishing out a rare round of apologies for its shambolic power supply.  Indeed, the sharp drop had lasted quite a while, dating back to late November 2021, the entire December 2021 and January 2022.

    But then, late January, I.E. started a series of apologies, sent as text messages to customers.  “Dear Esteemed Customer,” the DisCo opened, “The poor power supply you are currently experiencing is due to load shedding by Transmission, as a result of drop in power generation.”

    “We regret the inconvenience and wish to assure that our technical team is working with other partners in the electricity value chain to improve the situation.  Normalcy would be restored soon,” it pledged, “as stability is achieved.  Thanks for allowing us to serve you.”

    That was rather nice, if rare, for a company that seems fixated with revenue — no matter how oddly fleeced — and much less on the power it supplies to earn that revenue.  Really nice, though rare.

    But then, when comes the real apology from I.E.?  That question is very crucial.

    All through December 2021, power from I.E. was really terrible.  In fact, Christmas Day 2021 was a near-total blackout, all day; all night.  Boxing Day was a bit better, but it was no near pre-November 2021, where you could at least predict when I.E. would be on and when it would be off, like the self-celebrated yo-yo that it is.

    Indeed, all through the Yuletide period, cumulative supply crashed from say a peak of 15 hours (in a 24-hour cycle) to about five hours.  What was more?  Even at night when you were sure of some six hours (12 midnight to 6 am), I.E. got so erratic you couldn’t be sure of anything!  That pattern has continued till now, with only a slight improvement, thus necessitating I.E’s apology.

    Yet, when in January the estimated bill for December came, it was the same old rip-off: with a band of customers getting billed the old bill: from N42, 000 upwards.  Pray, how does I.E. do its billing arithmetic? If you confess you’d supply less, why should your billing be the same?

    The Federal Government, through the electricity market regulator, should put further pressure on I.E. and other DisCos to get customers pre-paid meters.  But before that, it should punish  (and harshly too) I.E — and others — for their fraudulent estimated billing system which is nothing but euphemism for heinous, in-your-face, monthly rip-off of helpless customers.

    So, the real apology I.E. customers expect is for fraudulent billing, in the face of supply plunge that I.E. itself has admitted.  Without that real apology — and I.E. going from there to self-correct and make refunds — the rare apology is absolutely meaningless and puerile.

  • FCT tenancy and Senate’s expedition

    FCT tenancy and Senate’s expedition

    Against apparent odds, the Senate is pushing towards enacting a bill that will limit house rental in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to three-month advance payment for a new tenant, and monthly payment thereafter. The proposed law titled “Advanced Rent (Residential Apartments, Office Spaces, etc.) Regulation Bill 2022,” sponsored by Senator Smart Adeyemi representing Kogi West, scaled second reading in the red chamber last week and got decapped to the Committee on Housing and Urban Development for further input. The committee has four weeks to report back to Senate at plenary.

    To be sure, the intention of the bill is noble as it seeks to provide social protection and make life less stressful for the working class in the federal capital, who incidentally are in the majority. In canvassing the bill, Adeyemi said if passed, it would enhance the well-being and living standard of FCT residents as well as minimise corruption and immorality encouraged by the oppressive tenancy system in place. He noted that the current system whereby landlords demand one to three years of rent in advance overburdens the residents, especially salaried workers, and breeds inequality and moral decadence as low income earners often resort to corruption, prostitution and other forms of criminality  to keep a roof over their heads. Other senators argued in the same line, with Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege who presided at plenary saying the bill was “popular” given the number of persons that have shown interest in it.

    There’s no doubt really about the bill’s popularity. After it was first read in the Senate on 18th January, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) rooted for the bill and hailed the comradeship of its sponsor. NLC President Ayuba Wabba reiterated Labour’s demand on government to provide decent houses and make land available and affordable to the people, adding: “We also remind government that the right to shelter is a fundamental human right and the Nigerian Constitution places a burden on government to redeem this obligation.” But good soundbites and popularity aren’t determinants of a good law; workability is. The only lawmaker who spoke against the bill, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, hinted at this when he said the issue of rent payment should be governed by free market forces like land availability, cost of building materials and capital outlay. “If government wants to ameliorate the sufferings of the masses, (it) can go into housing schemes, mortgage schemes, housing credit facilities, not control the business of private individuals in an emerging African democracy,” he argued.

    Although other senators overwhelmingly overrode Nnamani’s lone argument, the chamber must take care not to enact a lame law. That could be the case if the bill being processed is confined to front-end transactions between landlords and rent-seekers, without addressing back-end factors like provision of mortgage funding, land costs and the cost of building materials, among others. Senate should go beyond playing to the gallery to produce a law that works.

  • War on the ballot

    War on the ballot

    There seems to be a concerted war being waged against the ballot in Nigeria. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is under siege of arsonists and unless the trend is urgently arrested, the commission has warned that it is dangerous for the country’s electoral process.

    Local government area offices of the electoral body in Ezza North and Izzi council areas of Ebonyi State were simultaneously attacked in the early hours of last Wednesday. Office structures, generating sets, voting cubicles and other vital items were reported razed in those fires. That was only a few days after the commission’s Enugu State head office was lit into by hoodlums, causing extensive damage to some movable assets within the premises. The Enugu head office fire itself was barely four days after the commission’s office in Obollo-Afor, Udenu council area of same state was likewise torched by arsonists. Not long before then, INEC’s office in Ohafia council area of Abia State was burnt, just as that in Essien Udim council area of Akwa Ibom State. Earlier, sensitive materials were destroyed in an inferno at an INEC data processing centre in Kano. INEC offices in Anambra and Imo states have as well been targeted and razed. It was reported that between February 2019 and now, the number of incidents recorded regarding the commission’s offices include in Akwa Ibom (four), Abia (three), Anambra (two), Imo (two) and Enugu (two), not to mention Borno, Jigawa, Kano, Ondo, Plateau and Rivers states as well as the federal capital city of Abuja where its facilities have similarly been attacked.

    The consistency and rapid recurrence of arsonist attacks on the commission indexed a grand plot to weaken its capacity to conduct elections and thereby overthrow the ballot as a political system in this country. The curious thing is that no one has been apprehended and brought to justice by security operatives for any of those serial attacks.

    In a statement on the Enugu State head office fire, INEC spokesperson, National Commissioner Festus Okoye explained that unidentified persons overpowered the commission’s security personnel on duty in a bid to set the entire building ablaze. “The attention of the security agencies as well as the Federal and State Fire Services in Enugu was drawn to the unfolding situation and they responded swiftly. The attackers set the foyer ablaze, vandalised some offices in the main building and caused extensive damage to some of the commission’s movable assets within the premises. Six (6) utility pick up vehicles (Toyota Hilux) were burnt down while two (2) more were smashed and damaged,” he said, adding: “As we categorically mentioned in our earlier statements, the spate of attacks on the commission’s facilities portends danger to national electoral activities.”

    It is high time both INEC and the security establishment moved from responding to, and investigating incidents after-the-fact to preempting the arsonists. If they are not stopped now, they could stop the ballot.

     

  • Doguwa’s brood

    Doguwa’s brood

    House of Representatives Majority Leader Alhassan Ado Doguwa is a blessed man. He is politically enduring and, by obvious implication, well provisioned for lavish family comforts. Then, he enjoys the additional blessing of having sired 28 children from four wives and yet counting. The lawmaker who represents Doguwa/Tudun Wada federal constituency in Kano State said last week – jokingly, but for that reason not without meaning it – that he hopes  to reach the count of 30 children before the 2023 general election and perhaps earn consideration for a polling centre that will be dedicated to his family unit.

    Responding to felicitations by House Minority Leader Ndudi Elumelu on newly becoming a father Tuesday, last week, Doguwa, 56, said he remained active in procreation. “It is no longer news because this thing happened in the last 24 hours. It is true that my beloved family has gotten an additional one person, a bouncing baby girl. The mother and the baby are hale and hearty. The husband is still active,” he stated. The lawmaker referenced his word to his colleagues a couple of years back, saying: “I am here and I thank God that I kept my word with the House that while I had 27 (children), I promised you that I would continue counting. By the grace of God and your prayers, the count will continue.” When House of Representatives Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila asked if he was working towards having a polling unit in his house by hitting the 30 children mark, he replied: “At least, between now and 2023 before the elections come, if you allow that, then I would have a polling unit within my home.”

    Bearing children is a divine privilege and certainly nothing to be begrudged, especially when  the father can afford to maintain them. Besides, Doguwa has never shied from showing off his large family. The lawmaker, who is the longest serving member of the House of Representatives, had brought his four wives to the House at his inauguration as Majority Leader in 2020. “Mr. Speaker, these four wives you see have produced 27 kids for me, and I am still counting,” he said at the time, informing the House that his father who died at 86 years left behind 40 children, including a four-year-old at the time he passed on.

    But Hon. Doguwa shouldn’t just savour rearing a brood to earn consideration for a family polling unit, he should roll up his sleeves to contribute meaningfully to governance towards creating a socio-economic infrastructure that can sustain the country’s exploding population, including providing schooling opportunities for the upcoming generation and suitable jobs when they get through. Given his passion for procreation, he owes Nigeria that duty at the minimum.