The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Crocodile tears

  • Evans’ crocodile tears

    MANY strong men are only as strong as they look. Some of them are cowards, who will take to their heels at the shout of eh! But they put up a tough mien when they are armed. With guns in their hands, they are as dangerous as a rattlesnake. They will not think twice before snuffing life out of anyone who confronts them. Take the gun away from them and they become  jellies.

    A gun in itself is frightening enough; that cold metal sends a chill down the spine by merely looking at it, not to talk of when it is pointed at one. It becomes a wicked combination when a guy with bloodshot eyes is wielding the cold metal. Before he says freeze, you are already frozen and at the same time pleading for your life. Some of them listen to such plea and spare their victims; others do not. They kill and steal from their victims.

    Strong men are strong only when they have the upper hand. When the table turns, they are like any other man, who will give way to the other on the street. Whether as an armed robber, a kidnapper, a militant or an insurgent, strong men have something in common and that is to scare the daylight out of their victims before dealing with them.

    Who is the man that will see a gun pointed at him and will not do as ordered him? As the late Zik said only a mad person will argue with a man with a gun. With a gun, a hoodlum can do and undo. You are at his mercy. He barks orders at you and you comply for the fear of your life. Snatch the gun away from him and he becomes another Anini (remember him? The robber, who shook Benin to its foundation between 1985 and 1986, but urinated on himself when he was caught). We have seen other hoodlums turn sissy when the law caught up with them. They will never cease to amaze us with their acts of cowardice when they are before the law.

    Suspected kidnap kingpin Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike aka Evans is not a stranger to us all. We have heard about his escapades. Long before he was captured last year, he had written himself into the book of infamy as a dreaded person in the world of kidnapping. He was said to have gone after the affluent. His victims were the rich and mighty from whom he collected dollars, euros and pounds. He did not deal in chicken feeds. He went for the big bucks and it is either you pay up or you were killed. He employed fear as a tactic to unlock the wallets of the rich. His victims were kept in captivity until they paid to the last kobo. How they got the money never bothered him. All he was after was the money.

    Evans made money through this illicit trade and he lived big. He had wine, women, money and all the other luxury of life. You could not access his home except he allowed you in. To get him, the police employed some tactics in order to beat his state of the art security at the gate. For Evans, the end of the road came last June,  after years of being hunted by the police. A man, who collected ransom in foreign currencies, must surely know how to cover his tracks. He did that quite well.

    His luck ran out after the kidnapping of a pharmaceutical chief, who was kept in a bungalow in Igando. The businessman escaped and that opened the way for the busting of Evans’ gang. Evans kept his victims incommunicado, without food and water. His victims were only fed to enable them pay the ransom. He was ruthless in dealing with his victims through his foot soldiers. He had no pity for them. If they paid, they lived, if they did not, they were killed. That was his philosophy. He shunned those who begged for food, water and life. His stock reply to their request, we were told, was : ‘’go and pay up”.

    His love for money and the good life made him feel larger than life. Now in police net, he is crying like a baby whose lollypop was taken by an elder. In court on Monday, Evans wept! Why did he cry? He claimed that he was being maltreated in prison. But, how did he treat his own victims? If we may ask. Clad in shorts and  a green T – shirt , said to be torn on the right shoulder, Evans told the court after being allowed to speak : “I have an explanation to make. Since I have been in maximum prison, they have been maltreating me; no visit; they don’t feed me well; I have eye problems and I cannot see far”. In tears, he added : “What have I done to you people, they have been beating me? No good food. I have been locked up in one place since August 30. Why are they taken my case personal? Let me face my trial alive. Why do you people want to kill me?”

    Many will say serves him right. Evans is reaping what he sowed. He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind, so we are told. This is a lesson to other Evans still out there. Mend your ways now before it is too late.

     

    What a primary!

    THE Ekiti State All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship primary was a disaster foretold. Before the shadow election, analysts warned that the exercise would end in chaos if nothing was done to manage the crowd of contenders. To avoid disenfranchising any of the aspirants, the race was thrown open. Thirty-three contestants were fighting for one ticket and none was ready to step down for the other. The beauty of democracy is to allow a thousand thoughts contend; so the 33 were allowed to slug it out. But some of the aspirants and their supporters had their plans. They came to disrupt the exercise because they knew they cannot win. Election, whether at the party or national level, should be seen as a game and the contestants, sportsmen. Last Saturday, these spoilers virtually turned the congress venue to a battleground as they snatched ballot boxes and papers.

    It was a show of shame not befitting of the ruling APC. The party should show example with the way it conducts its affairs. It must show that it encourages internal democracy because that is the only way it can promote national democracy as the ruling party. What happened last Saturday in Ado Ekiti should not  repeat itself at the rescheduled primary coming up tomorrow. Otherwise, the party will turn itself to the laughing stock of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which conducted a hitch free primary on Tuesday.

  • Rivers rerun: Insatiability and crocodile tears

    SIR:The Rivers State rerun elections held on December 10 for seats into the National Assembly have come and gone. Winners and losers however, emerged. In sync with democratic norms, as results were declared by the returning officers designated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), those aggrieved over the outcomes of the election should maintain decorum and seek for justice at the Election Tribunals. Heating up the polity out of self-aggrandizements and insatiability is unreasonable.  As it stands, Rivers peoples’ votes did count. APC won and lost; PDP won and lost. Democracy demands that peoples votes must count, and winners and losers must emerge. These are the governing elements of democratic processes. For those that won, congratulations. For those that lost, keep hopes alive, tomorrow is yet another day. Post-election violence and political fanaticism should be left behind. Those that boastfully threatened to pull down the system should sheathe their swords. The preponderance is that the election was largely violence free. To persistently push otherwise is idiosyncratic, myopic, recalcitrant and egocentric.

    Ultimately, democracy in Rivers won. Whatever tears, crocodile or otherwise, election is over, hence, live and let live.

    From the hubbub; 28,000 regular policemen, 5,000 Special Anti-robbery Squad (SARS) personnel, 28,000 soldiers of the Nigerian Army, 5,000 men from the Navy and Airforce, 15,000 from Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps and 15,000 other personnel from sundry para-military agencies were lavishly deployed by the federal government during the election. Under the laws, the president committed no offence for dispatching such numbers to ensure a hitch-free election provided the operatives allowed freedom of movement and operated reasonably within their statutory limits. As a matter of fact, such numbers could be tripled if the presidency considers it necessary. The unending hullabaloo over the action is uncalled for, and connotes ulterior motives over the election, and the President owes no explanation on the number of operatives he wishes to use in protecting lives and properties; his primary obligation as provided in Section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution, Federal Republic of Nigeria.

    The Rivers rerun irrespective of few alleged inadequacies was a huge success on account of the minimal casualties recorded during the election. It is aggregately abysmal for political leaders who armed themselves with adequate security to be inciting the public into fomenting troubles. Life is sacred and leaders are under obligation to ensuring that human lives are maximally protected. It is also important to note that under democracy, a governor or president is only allowed to cast a vote in registered polling unit and not to convert to election monitor as witnessed in the election. The election officials including accredited observers are only valid resource persons for an election. Hence, the discipline of a police officer attached to Governor Nyesom Wike that led him across polling units he wasn’t supposed to appear during the elections was apt.

    The best any governor can do ahead of election towards ensuring its free and fair is to supportively provide sufficient electronic gadgets to the accredited observers and his party agents for recordings and instant updates, but to be part of the election that is being conducted by an independent body outside the executive arm is grotesque, and inconsistent with independence of the electoral body. For a political leader who is optimally surrounded alongside family members by combatant personnel to be inciting the vulnerable citizens for violence, anyway, it is condemnable and unfortunate.

    • Carl Umegboro,

    Lagos.

  • Crocodile tears for late coach Musa Abdullahi

    The recent demise of coach Musa Abdulahi who contributed to the growth and development of soccer in age grade competition in this country would never be forgotten in hurry.

    When the late Abdullahi took ill no assistance was made available to him in spite of his immense contribution to the upliftment of sports in the country.

    The late coach was assistant coach to Coach Fanny Amu when they won the Under-17 soccer competition World Cup in Japan.

    He also assisted Coach Bonfray Joe to win the gold medal at

    Atlanta Olympic Games where Nigeria’s soccer power came to the limelight, but all this success by late coach Abduallhi was not recognized by the sporting authority to give him any necessary assistance when he needed it most.

    The plight of sports men and women who toil to bring honour and glory to their father land are often forgotten when they find themselves in critical conditions.

    Many of our sportsmen and women are always been neglected and abandoned to fend for themselves without any assistance from government.

    It’s unfortunate, after the demise of such sportsmen and women, the authority would now start to shed crocodile tears and shower encomium, which is not in tune with the agony he passed through when he was alive.

    Its clarion call on all relevant stakeholders and government to always come to the rescue of such sportsmen and women who found themselves in any unfortunate situation and stop the trend of always paying tribute when they pass to world beyond.

    We should encourage the living legend of our heroes and heroines who did the nation proud in any human endeavour to send signal to the upcoming generation that they would not be neglected in time of their needs.

    May the soul of the lateAbdullahi rest in perfect peace.

     

    •Bala Nayashi

    Lokoja, Kogi State.

  • NIS tragedy; PDP’s crocodile tears

    A bungled recruitment drive by the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) last Saturday left 19 desperate job seekers dead and scores of others still in critical condition in hospitals all over the country including Abuja which accounted for eight of the casualties. In Abuja as was the case in other venues, the tragedy followed a stampede as the over 70,000 youths that turned up for an aptitude test tried to gain entry into the main bowl of the stadium through only one point.

    Although deaths have become mere statistics in our nation which is today under assault by Boko Haram that attack army barracks, detonate bombs in heavily populated areas killing in hundreds, and Fulani herdsmen that sack villages killing women and children without discrimination, but for a government whose primary responsibility is the protection of lives and property to be seen as an accessory to the killing of job-seeking youths through the sloppy attitude of its officials especially at a time the legitimacy of that government is being viciously challenged through internal insurrections, cannot but be unsettling.

    I am also not sure if the crocodile tears coming from PDP and its leading lights whose inept leadership, bad economic policies and total absence of a coherent employment policy this past 15 years account for the current state of unemployment of thousands of youths turned out by our universities annually is not as infuriating as the tragic death of the youths.

    The PDP which seems to have shown more commitment to the sharing of our national patrimony by some of its members through fraudulent privatization policy and outright stealing by not a few of its indicted leading members is, according to Olisa Mentuh, its National Publicity Secretary “shocked and deeply saddened by the news of the untimely death of the young citizens”. The president who appointed Abba Moro a minister for no other consideration beyond being a failed PDP gubernatorial candidate in Benue, the late president Yar Adua’s Campaign Organisation Coordinator and one-time Director-General of the David Mark Campaign Organisation was also said to be “personally devastated by the incidents”. To the Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba whose colleagues refused to screen Abba Moro but asked him to take a bow just because he was the senate president’s candidate, the death of the job seekers was “an unimaginable tragedy for the country.” And for Tambuwal, the Speaker of the Lower House, “the death of the innocent youths was sorrowful and regrettable”. But no one is deceived. Nigerians know those responsible for the latest tragedy as well as the current state of our nation.

    Moro the Minister of Interior, for inexplicable reasons approved the sales of 520,000 applications for available 4,556 positions, raking in millions in application fees and cost of tea shirts. We are not told the final destination of the blood money but it is certain the amount like the NNPC $8 million a day scam described as kerosene subsidy or the huge amount to be raised by FRSC through double taxation of motorists in the name of new plate numbers will not pass through the federation account. However, in Moro’s judgment, the victims including the dead are to be blamed. As he self-righteously told grieving parents and concerned Nigerians, the victims “lost their lives due to impatience; they did not follow the laid down procedures spelt out to them before the exercise.” It didn’t matter that the applicants were already at some of the centres as early as 6.am while the ministry officials sauntered in at after 9.am and as was the case in Abuja National Stadium, expected the over 70,000 applicants including pregnant women who had been on the queue for over three hours to use only one entrance in the absence of crowd control experts.

    But beyond the deaths (we have a daily harvest of that in Borno, Adamawa, Benue, Plateau, Katsina); beyond inhuman conditions, (we have in the words of one analyst become victims of self-abuse as many of the victims attended universities where their hostels had no functional toilets and class room without desks), and beyond insensitive and outright reckless ministers (President Jonathan can boast of not a few), the tragedy of last Saturday, is a symptom of absence of governance arising from the collapse of our bureaucracy, once rated the best in Africa. What manner of government officials took the decision to conduct aptitude test for close to half a million in one fell swoop using various stadia across the country?

    The collapse of governance has found expression in the fact that for 15 years of PDP, we have been ruled by one-eyed king as predicted by Bode Thomas who had argued during the pre-independence years that what we needed was regionalism with strong regional parties, and leaders to meet at the centre. The North either for political expediency or its conspiracy against the West for Awolowo’s mortal sin of supporting the self-actualization quest of minorities, who wanted liberation from their northern feudal lords, imposed Obasanjo as its chosen leader for the Yoruba nation even when he was roundly rejected by his people. Obasanjo, who out of delusion thinks without him there would be no Nigeria chose ailing Yar’Adua just as he was also to single-handedly impose ill-prepared Goodluck Jonathan as the representative of the South-south at the centre.

    President Jonathan, the late Yar Adua and Obasanjo, their godfather, cannot give what they did not have. And this perhaps explains why when Obasanjo’s attention was called to the absence of a coherent employment policy by PDP during his first term in office, he enthusiastically called our attention to thousands of young graduates hawking recharge cards and the unemployable illiterate youths who could neither read nor write, hawking plantain chips on the streets of our major cities as dividends of undefined PDP employment policy.

    Obasanjo’s successors have not gone beyond his poverty alleviation gimmick that allows favoured PDP business partners to be issued with import licenses for fairly used motor cycles and tricycles from India. Yet this is a nation that had its first motorcycle assembly plant in the 1960s.

    As if this is not tragic enough, they have continued with his liberalization economic policies which allow granting of waivers to favored business fronts importing, cars, tyres, ceramics, shoes, drugs, textile including used clothes. And now the same set of PDP leaders who have presided over the collapse of all our budding industries this past 15 years are shedding crocodile tears because 19 out of desperate 500, 000 graduates fighting for a place in government politically manufactured 4,500 vacancies in NIS lost their lives.

    The truth of the matter is that PDP and its leading lights have paid only lip service to unemployment because as the major beneficiaries of the present economic policy that has ceded ownership of publicly owned companies to their members, they are answerable to none. The banking reforms which as we now know favoured those in government and their friends led to the reduction of employment by over 50%. The telecommunication sector driven only by profit firm their services out .

    And if you can still not see PDP politics in last Saturday tragedy, ask if NIS obtained police permit to use the Port Harcourt stadium. Not too long ago, 13,000 employed teachers assembled in the same stadium purportedly to collect their appointment letters. The Inspector General of Police ordered Mathew Mbu his commissioner to disperse the newly recruited teachers with teargas. PDP members whether at the state or national level hardly embark on any venture that will not yield them maximum political dividends?

  • Crocodile tears on the grave of Mandela

    The death of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918-2013) has attracted a lot of emotions, comments and tributes from many current leaders and past leaders of several countries in the world. Some of these comments are genuine, others are insincere and amounts to crocodile tears. About 100 global political players, both current and those who have held positions of power in the world, including President Barrack Obama, current American President and three former Presidents- Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W Bush, and the heir apparent to the British throne Prince Charles as well as our own President Goodluck Jonathan and David Cameron, John Major and Gordon Brown, current and former British Prime Ministers respectively attended the official funeral ceremony held at a big stadium in Soweto South Africa. This must have been a security nightmare for the South African authorities. Mandela who initially embraced the non-violent philosophy of Mochandas Ghandhi-Ji later abandoned non-violence and was largely responsible for forming the Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation), which was the armed youthful wing of the African National Congress (ANC). The young revolutionaries in South Africa by the 1960s were already getting impatient with the conservative and non-violent approach to African liberation espoused by the ANC. Members of the Pan African Congress (PAC) were already critical of the non-violent campaign of the ANC. We can therefore say Nelson Mandela reluctantly took to armed struggle because as he argued nobody can kill a wild beast with bare hands.

    In the history of the liberation of South Africa some attention should be paid to the PAC and Azanian People’s Congress’ roles as alternative platforms for the liberation of South Africa. A comparable situation is what happened in the US where the existence of militant youthful groups such as Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown, as well as the Black Panther Movement of Huey Newton and Eldrige Cleaver, and the Black Muslims particularly the faction led by one of its charismatic leaders, Malcom X with their cry burn baby burn made Martin Luther King nonviolent campaign largely acceptable to the white folks. Even though the situation was not exactly the same, white folks saw Mandela as somebody they could ultimately do business with.

    This does not diminish the achievements of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela but it is important to put the two global icons within their historical context. The two share many things in common especially their ability to forgive their oppressors. Martin Luther King’s tolerance is firmly rooted in Christian religion while Mandela’s ability to forgive is rooted in political reality. He wanted to build a non-racial majoritarian democracy in South Africa and he came to the conclusion that the only way to do this was by forgiving his racist oppressors who had built in South Africa a first world infrastructure and economy albeit on the backs of the blacks. If he had adopted the Mugabe approach of land expropriation, he would have destroyed his much loved country of South Africa for which he paid huge price of 27 years imprisonment. Since 1994 when he became president and now after having been succeeded by Thabo Mbeki and the current President Jacob Zuma, the vast majority of black South Africans have remained largely poor. Of course centuries of Black marginalization cannot be removed within a few years but young black South Africans are not prepared to wait indefinitely for the fruit of majority rule. This is the challenge facing South Africa today. And some of the militant youths have been known to issue militant statements about the conniving and apologetic leadership of the ANC who are only ready to tinker with the white economic structure of South Africa without radically changing it. This is why incredibly as it may sound, Robert Mugabe is perhaps the most popular political figure in Southern Africa today. This also accounts for the tumultuous ovation he attracted when he entered the stadium during the funeral mass for Mandela.

    I had the opportunity to meet Mandela in May 1990, when he came to Nigeria, and the University of Lagos conferred on him an Honorary Doctorate degree after leaving prison and before becoming president of South Africa. Professor Nurudeen Alao who was Vice Chancellor asked me and Dr. Tunji Dare to prepare a citation for the great man. We independently wrote this and after comparing notes, Dare said my citation captured totally the essence of the man, and he subsequently published his own draft, I believe in The Guardian. I remember that one of the things the great man asked us was that he wanted to learn how Nigeria has been able to create a forum like the House of Chiefs in the old regions for traditional leaders to participate in governance so that he could do the same in South Africa. I do not know what became of his interest in this regard.

    After Mandela’s death, I have been thoroughly amused by the comments of our leaders. Some of these leaders have hailed him as a great man, a great African icon and a great world leader that is worthy of emulation. Yet some of these so-called African leaders held power for years without leaving any remarkable or worthwhile imprint on the society. It is surprising that those who overstayed their welcome in office are now acclaiming Mandela as their friend and as someone from whom they learnt something. One only hopes that our current leaders and those after them will learn from this great man’s example, that it is not the amount of money that one has that matters, but that it is the enduring and unforgettable legacies that one leaves behind that really matter.

    The former American President George W Bush also went to South Africa to pay his last tribute to Mandela; I believe his sincerity. But we should not forget that his Vice President Dick Cheney regarded Mandela as a terrorist. And according to General Colin Powel, a former American Secretary of State and his successor Condoleezza Rice both of whom are blacks claimed that they were hugely embarrassed to find Mandela’s name on America’s terrorist list. It is surprising that the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and the Chinese President Xi Jinping were conspicuously absent in South Africa to pay their last respects to Mandela; they will not be missed of course. And the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found a lame reason about security and the cost of the trip not to go to South Africa. Of course, the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was there because Mandela was a supporter of the Palestinian cause and liberation. Let it be remembered that Israel and the United States under President Ronald Reagan assisted South Africa to acquire nuclear weapons in the late 1970s.

    President Jonathan in some kind of homily during a funeral service for Mandela said that Nigeria is not likely to have a man of Mandela’s stature. I disagree and I say General Yakubu Gowon remains the greatest Head of State of Nigeria with high moral stature on a comparable level with Mandela. Gowon’s case is that of a prophet that is with no honour in his own country. Here was a man who governed this country for nine years and ended up not having a single house or billions of naira, and oil blocs in his name but was responsible for most of the enduring physical infrastructure in the country. Here is a war leader who fought a civil war and ended it without show trials and executions of those on the other side of the conflict. Gowon represents our own Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela rolled into one. Since leaving office, he went back to the university and earned himself a doctorate degree in Political Science and has never soiled his hands with filthy lucre. He has used his moral currency and goodwill to attract funds for good cause such as guinea-worm eradication and has spent along with others, years in praying for the peace of Nigeria. When he was in power, Gowon was a pan-Africanist and extended the reach of Nigeria’s foreign policy to the black Diaspora in the Caribbean. History will be fair to Gowon, he may not have had the press and publicity and international acclaim that Mandela has but Gowon among our leaders certainly made a difference. And he deserves to be celebrated now and in the future.