The Nation Newspaper

Tag: freedom

  • Freedom, finally

    Freedom, finally

    Burkinabe authorities, mid-last week, let go 11 Nigerian soldiers they had taken into custody for alleged violation of that country’s airspace. The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) C-130 transport aircraft that was impounded along with the military personnel was also released.

    Freedom came for the soldiers and aircraft following high-level diplomatic engagement by the Nigerian government with Ouagadougou. Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar, on Wednesday, met with Burkina Faso junta leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, in the country’s capital. Tuggar, who led a Nigerian delegation, said at a parley with pressmen that the visit was at the instance of President Bola Tinubu.

    It was on the heels of the Ouagadougou meeting that the freedom deal was announced. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Kimiebi Ebienfa, confirmed on Wednesday night that the aircraft and personnel had been released.

    The C-130 NAF aircraft carrying nine passengers and two crew members got impounded on 8th December following an emergency landing in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second largest city. Initial reports said the aircraft was grounded by Burkinabe authorities for unauthorised incursion into the country’s airspace. Officials of the Confederation of Sahel States (AES) disclosed that preliminary investigations indicated that the aircraft lacked authorisation to fly through Burkina Faso’s airspace. AES is the breakaway umbrella body formed by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger Republic after they pulled out of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for reason of coming under military rule.

    A joint statement by the junta alliance said investigation by Burkinabe authorities showed the aircraft did not obtain required authorisation to fly over their territory – something the body condemned as a breach of the sovereignty of its member-state. Speaking for the confederation, General Assimi Goïta of Mali described the NAF aircraft landing in Burkina Faso as an “unfriendly act carried out in defiance of international law,” and he warned that member-states had been authorised to neutralise any aircraft violating their airspace henceforth.

    The alarm of the AES states was obviously fuelled by the timing of the emergency landing in Burkina Faso – coming just a day after Nigerian airstrikes in Benin Republic that were instrumental in foiling an attempted coup against President Patrice Talon. On the previous day, the Nigerian government had deployed fighter jets and ground forces in the neighbouring country to help loyal troops thwart an attempted coup by dislodging soldiers led by Colonel Pascal Tigri, who had seized the national broadcaster and announced suspension of the democratic order. Acting on requests from the government of Benin, President Tinubu ordered NAF fighter jets to enter the country and take over the airspace to dislodge the coupists from the national television station and a military camp where they regrouped, according to official statement. Within hours, loyal Benin forces aided by Nigerian troops reclaimed the national broadcaster and put down the coup attempt.

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    But the C-130 aircraft that was in Burkina Faso was neither on military operation nor espionage mission, according to the Nigerian military. It was on a ferry mission to Portugal, and it made a precautionary landing because the crew detected a technical issue shortly after take-off from Lagos on 8th December. In a statement, NAF spokesperson, Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame, explained that the crew’s diversion to the nearest airfield was in line with standard safety procedures and international aviation protocols. “Following take-off from Lagos, the crew observed a technical concern that necessitated a precautionary landing in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, the nearest airfield, in accordance with standard safety procedures and international aviation protocols,” he said, assuring that the personnel were safe and were being well treated by the host authorities.

    In a later statement, Ejodame fought back speculations that the aircraft was on intelligence mission in Burkina Faso, and that the personnel were intelligence officers trained in espionage who were on a clandestine intelligence operation. “The aircraft in question was on a duly authorised ferry flight to Portugal for scheduled periodic depot maintenance, a routine and mandatory lifecycle requirement for military transport aircraft and, therefore, had no operational tasking or mission of any kind,” he affirmed. “The flight was covered by necessary flight documentation, including provisions for diversion in line with international aviation procedures. The precautionary landing at Bobo-Dioulasso was initiated strictly on safety grounds, in full compliance with standard aviation protocols. At no time was the aircraft intercepted, forced to land, or found operating without authorisation, and claims of airspace violation or hostile intent are fabrications intended to misinform and inflame public sentiment,” he added.

    According to the NAF spokesperson, the personnel on board were “standard aircrew and mission-support officers conducting a legitimate military air movement, not intelligence operatives, and the aircraft was not equipped with surveillance or data-collection systems of any kind.” He  stated, however, that matters relating to the aircraft and its personnel were being handled through established diplomatic channels, and in line with international norms and bilateral relations.

    Well, diplomacy triumphed: the personnel and aircraft were let out after 10 days in custody. There are instructive takeaways, however. One is that junta-led countries of the sub-region may have brewed enough resentment to stand up to Nigeria, the biggest power within the bloc, whenever they perceive a red line crossed. It is almost like Venezuela standing up to the United States in the Americas. Whether they have the real capacity to live up that dare is another matter, though. With better intention, Burkina Faso could have verified that the aircraft was not equipped for any hazardous mission and that the personnel on board were non-combatants, and not hold them in custody until a diplomatic reprieve.

    Then, there was the gang-up factor in AES that made the precautionary landing at Bobo-Dioulasso to be viewed, not as potential violation against just Burkina Faso but the entire junta alliance. Notice that the three member-states of the alliance reacted concertedly and spoke jointly all through, not leaving the matter to Burkinabe authorities. It was Mali’s Goïta who called out the NAF aircraft emergency landing as an unfriendly act and served notice that AES member-states were poised to neutralise any aircraft violating their airspace henceforth. In effect, they served notice of a joint survival bond whereby assault on any singular member of their alliance is deemed an assault on all – the same creed espoused by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) alliance where attack on any member-nation is taken to be an attack on all warranting a collective response.

    Contrast that, for a moment, with the disposition within ECOWAS. Even though the sensitivity of the AES states to the NAF aircraft’s landing in Bobo-Dioulasso was accentuated by Nigeria’s role in thwarting the attempted coup in Benin, which was openly applauded by the regional body, the task of sorting out with Burkina Faso fell on Nigeria solely. And so, you never heard ECOWAS as a body or any member-state speaking up for Nigeria in rejoinder to the AES, or joining in negotiating the release of the seized personnel and aircraft. Maybe ECOWAS needs to learn about forging a united front against external threats to its member-states.

    Besides, the Bobo-Dioulasso incident highlighted the level of estrangement that has taken place within the sub-region. From being fellow members of the same bloc of interests under ECOWAS, the junta alliance now views other countries as potential enemies that stage “unfriendly” acts and deserve being neutralised in the event of future encounters. But that ill-will was only skin deep, apparently, because all three AES states yet maintain embassies in Nigeria, among others, to manage bilateral relations, trade and consular services. Nigeria also maintains diplomatic presence in those countries to promote regional cooperation.

    There were speculations that the Sahel states wanted to use the occasion as a bargaining chip to get some relief from the hurtful blockade of trade and movement of goods and services that ECOWAS imposed on them, which they believed Nigeria was in a position to influence within the bloc. That might well be so, but it did not justify their inflaming public passion with allegations of enemy action levelled against Nigeria. Regimes may come and go, but citizens will always live and inter-relate across country borderlines. No government should seek to upend that.

    •Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.

  • Kidnapped former DVC regains freedom

    Kidnapped former DVC regains freedom

    • •Police kill kidnapper in Abuja

    Former Deputy Vice Chancellor of Abia State University (ABSU), Uturu, Prof. Godwin Emezue, has regained freedom.

    He was said to have been taken to an undisclosed private hospital for treatment.

    Family sources said  the don was released on Tuesday night.

    The kidnappers, who initially demanded N55 million ransom, had warned his family against involving the police if they wanted him alive. But sources said the family negotiated and paid N25 million before he was released.

    Emezue was said to have been with his wife when his kidnappers, who were trailing him, double-crossed their vehicle at Umuekwu Amachara in Umuahia South LGA, blocked them and whisked him away.

    The criminals, it was learnt, took his wife’s Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card before they dragged the Professor into a Lexus SUV and drove off.

    In Abuja, policemen attached to the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) have killed a suspected notorious kidnapper, Isa Dei-Dei, after storming the hideout of a gang in the suburbs of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

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    Force Public Relations Officer, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, in a statement yesterday, said other members of the gang fled with bullet injuries.

    He said: “About 10:15am on February 5, operatives of the DFI-IRT, acting on intelligence, got information on the hideout of a notorious bandit group, led by one Isa Dei-Dei, in the suburbs of the FCT, and immediately proceeded to the location for possible arrests.

    “Upon closing in on them, the bandits sighted the police and fled. The operatives went after them, which led to a gun duel. In the process, the notorious Isa Dei-Dei was neutralised while other members of the syndicate escaped with injuries.

    “We urge the public, most especially medical practitioners, to call our attention to anyone or patients seen with gunshot wounds for further investigation.”

    The FCT has since last December experienced incessant kidnappings that have created fear among residents especially those in rural areas.

  • Freedom with responsibility

    Freedom with responsibility

    • Court verdict should strengthen media’s hand to sustain society

    A Federal High Court in Abuja lately forbade the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) from imposing fines  on broadcast stations for alleged violations of its broadcasting code. Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia said the commission was not permitted to exercise administrative, legislative and judicial powers simultaneously.

    The verdict stemmed from a suit instituted by a civil society group, Media Rights Agenda (MRA), against the NBC, following the commission’s imposition of a N5million fine apiece on a television network and three pay-tv platforms for allegedly undermining national security by airing documentaries on banditry in Nigeria. NBC had on August 3, 2022 imposed the penalty on Trust-Tv Network Limited along with Multichoice Nigeria Limited, owners of DSTV; Telcom Satellite Limited (TSTV) and NTA Startimes Limited for broadcasting a documentary about the menace of banditry and condition of insecurity in Zamfara State.

    In the suit filed on its behalf by an Abuja-based human rights lawyer, Uche Amulu, MRA asked the court to hold, among others, that NBC’s imposition of fine on the media platforms and Tv network was unlawful and unconstitutional, and had a chilling effect on the freedom of media to impart information and ideas. According to the group, the penalty would deter the platforms and network from reporting the true state of affairs regarding the security situation in Nigeria, and therefore constituted a violation of its right, that of its members and other citizens of Nigeria to freedom of expression, particularly their right to receive ideas and information without interference as guaranteed by the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights. MRA also sought a declaration that the procedure adopted by the NBC in imposing the fines was a flagrant violation of the rules of natural justice and the right to fair hearing guaranteed under Section 36 of the Constitution and Article 7 of the African Charter, because the commission was the drafter of the code that prescribed the alleged offences for which the media platforms and the Tv network were punished.

    Meanwhile, the code also empowers the NBC to receive complaints, investigate and adjudicate on the complaints, impose fines and collect fines.

    Justice Ofili-Ajumogobia in her verdict, held that the NBC, not being a court of law, acted above its powers by imposing fines. She declared null and void the provisions of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code authorising the NBC to impose fines on broadcast stations for alleged breaches of the code, saying administrative and regulatory bodies could not simultaneously exercise judicial powers. The judge agreed with all of MRA’s arguments and granted its prayers, although she declined monetary awards sought as damages by the group.

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    It was not the first time the court would stop NBC from imposing fines on broadcast stations. In May 2023, Justice James Omotosho of the same court gave an order of perpetual injunction restraining the commission from imposing fines on broadcast stations in the country. Incidentally, it was the same MRA that sued. In its originating motion dated November 9, 2021, the group sought a declaration that the sanctions procedure applied by the NBC in imposing N500,000 fine apiece on 45 broadcast stations on March 1, 2019 was a violation of the rules of natural justice. Arguing the motion, MRA’s lawyer, Noah Ajare, said the fine imposition violated existing statutes because the code that created alleged offences of which the broadcast stations were accused was written and adopted by the NBC, “and (it) also gives powers to the said commission to receive complaints of alleged breaches, investigate and adjudicate the complaints, impose sanctions, including fines, and ultimately collect the fines, which the commission uses for its own purposes.”

    We commend MRA for its tireless crusade for media freedom, and applaud the court verdict on the group’s suit. The media need be shielded from arbitrary regulatory powers if they would effectively perform their constitutional role.

     But the point must also be made that there is no freedom without responsibility, and neither is there absolutism in liberty. Freedom without self-regulating responsibility would lead to anarchy. And so, we recommend that to safeguard the liberty that was affirmed by the courts, media organisations must be acutely aware of the onus – not only to stabilise society, but also to self-regulate in a way that would isolate and contain industry ethic violators. The media need to energise internal ombudsman mechanisms to curtail excesses that could hazard the freedom of the industry, which the court verdict has just reaffirmed. Partisan and jingoistic overreaches, among other base tendencies, should have no place in media space.

  • Kidnapped Adamawa APC chieftain regains freedom

    The police command in Adamawa State has confirmed the release of Mr. HamiduMijinyawa, the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairman in Demsa Local Government Area, by his abductors.

    Mijinyawa was abducted in the early hours of Wednesday by some gunmen in Demsa who later called by telephone to demand a N20million ransom.

    Confirming the release, the command spokesman, SP Othman Abubakar, said the party chairman was released in the early hours of yesterday.

    Abubakar did not give details of the release and whether ransom was paid or not.

    “All I can tell you for now is that Mijinyawa has been released by the kidnappers,” Abubakar said.

    The State Publicity Secretary of APC, Alhaji Mohammed Abdullahi, also confirmed thatMijinyawa was hale and hearty.

    “He is out hale and hearty and is now with his family,” Abdullahi said.

     

  • Kidnapped Ekiti LG officials regain freedom

    The two officials of Emure Local Government in  Ekiti State, kidnapped last week have regained their freedom.

    The Police command in the state yesterday confirmed the release of the two victims.

    Pastor A. Onaade and Dr O. Fashina, were kidnapped on Ikere Ekiti- Ise-Emure road while returning to Ado Ekiti.

    However, another victim, Mr Abayomi Ajayi who reportedly conveyed other occupants in his car was killed.

    One of the victims, Onaade is an accountant while Fashina is in charge of Primary Health Care in the council.

    The gunmen, after killing Ajayi, had seized Onaade and Fashina and demanded N10m ransom each from their families.

    It was however not clear if any ransom was eventually paid to secure their release.

    Speaking on the development in Ado Ekiti, the Command’s Public Relations Officer, DSP Caleb Ikechukwu, said the captives were freed by the police.

    Ikechukwu said the newly posted Commissioner of police, Mr Asuquo Amba, had also visited the kidnapped victims in their respective homes.

    “The Commissioner of police has visited them, they are in good shape.

    “It is the duty of the police to ensure that everybody is safe and that we have done, and will continue to do,” he said.

    According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the commissioner declined to mention the actual location where the victims regained their freedom.

    On the issue of ransom, Ikechukwu said: “The victims never brought this to our notice. They didn’t tell us they paid anything. All we did was to do our work and ensure that they returned home safe and in good health.”

     

  • Abducted oil workers regain freedom

    Four abducted members of a Joint Investigation Team probing the cause of an oil spill at Agip’s facility in Azuzuama, Southern Ijaw Local Government of Bayelsa State, have regained freedom.

    Spokesman for the Joint Task Force in Niger Delta Major Ibrahim Abdullah said yesterday in Yenagoa that they were freed following pressure from the troops in search of the kidnappers.

    Suspected kidnappers abducted the four persons, including two employees of the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC), in Azuzuama, along the waterways, on October 4.

    The Director-General, National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Mr. Peter Idabor, whose employee was a victim, confirmed the release to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

    “The incident occurred last week. The four people held hostage were freed yesterday. Our worker, who was among the victims, has reunited with his family.

    “He was abducted with an official of the Bayelsa Ministry of Environment and two Agip workers. They were released together,” Idabor said.

  • Nine regain freedom in Akwa Ibom community

    Nine persons abducted by cult and banditry syndicate operating in Ukanafun and Etim Ekpo axis of Akwa Ibom State have been rescued by security operatives.

    Their rescue came as relative calm and normalcy returned to the area with the syndicate smashed.

    Governor Udom Emmanuel disclosed this yesterday during the monthly prayer meeting at the State Government House Chapel, in Uyo.

    He said: “We made a remarkable breakthrough in Ukanafun and Etim Ekpo, it’s been calm. We can now feel the peace across the entire state.”

    He recounted that on the first day of the last month, “God gave us a message, God said Baal Shall Not Speak Again, and within a week a lot of commotions took place.

    “And we followed it up by praying that God should let the wickedness of the wicked perish with the wicked but establish the just.

    Refusing to speak further on the fate of the alleged culprits, Emmanuel said security strategies and action were best kept under wraps.

    The governor however said there had been repentance by some young members of the gangs.

    “A whole lot of them have repented, they have come out to say they are sorry.

    “If God says we should forgive, I think we may find a way to forgive those who have come out to repent. They might be the best evangelists.”

    He said from his interaction with one of them, so many of them had not acquired formal education and were carrying out the heinous activities out of ignorance.

    The Governor charged the Church and parents to do a lot more in moulding and shaping young people to grow up in the knowledge of sound moral principles.

    “If they did not go to school, the church through Sunday school would have done in them what formal education could not do.”

    He berated the Federal Government for not considering any oil-producing states for refund of Paris and London loans.

    According to him: “A nation where you use our crude oil money to settle Paris Club and London Club, and when it came to a time for refunds, no single oil producing state could be considered, rather a state that did not contribute anything was given N17bn, and they gave us the oil producing states nothing.”

    Citing such action as injustice, Emmanuel echoed the biblical aphorism that righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach.

     

  • Man regains freedom two years after incarceration

    An indigene of Osisioma Local Government Area, Mr. Chidiebere Onwemere, has regained his freedom after two years of being behind bars at the Afara Prison facility in Umuahia, the Abia State capital.

    The man in his 30s was accused of killing Uzochi Chinyere who lived in same compound with him.

    Narrating his ordeal after his release from prisons in Afara, Umuahia, on Tuesday, Onwumere thanked God for vindicating him two years after suffering for a crime he knew nothing about.

    He said he ran into troubles due to efforts to save the deceased.

    According to him: “I came back to where I was residing at Umujiji, Isiahia Osisioma, around 6pm after two weeks in my village where I went to harvest and process palm fruits only to see my neighbour lying helpless.

    “She was very weak and I decided to assist her to the hospital with the help of other neighbours since none of her blood relations was around.

    “A pastor who resides within the neigbourhood took us with his car to a nearby hospital, Shiloh hospital, where the doctor, after examining her, asked us to deposit N5, 000 to enable him carry out some tests to ascertain what exactly was wrong with her.

    “I and some other neighbours contributed the money and made the deposit.

    “When the result came out, the doctor said he suspected she was knocked out after taking overdose of substance but assured us that he will treat her and that she will be well again.”

    He went on: “The next morning Mr. Promise, the elder brother to the deceased, arrived the hospital and insisted on taking her away to another hospital against the doctor’s advice.

    “After several efforts to stop him failed, he took her to an unknown destination.

    “After a few days, Promise came back to our compound and took me to World Bank Police Station, Aba, where he handed me over to the police on the allegation that I beat her sister to death.

    “Despite pleas by neighbours and other relations of the deceased that my hands are clean and that there was a doctor’s report stating that their sister died of substance abuse, Promise insisted and filed a murder charge against me.

    “I was arraigned on suit no U/520c/2016 and remanded in prison custody since June 2016.

    “It was Barrister Jerry Uzosike who God used to vindicate and bring me out of prison today.”

    His lawyer, Uzosike, said when he heard about Chidiebere’s plight, he was touched and decided to wade into the matter without charging any legal fees.

    He expressed happiness his efforts to ensure that Chidiebere was released paid off at last.

     

  • Kidnapped PDP chief regains freedom

    After spending about four day in kidnappers’ den, the Ekiti State People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Financial Secretary, Kayode Oni, has regained his freedom.

    Oni was abducted on Saturday at a location between Efon and Erio on his way to Aramoko, the headquarters of Ekiti West Local Government.

    The PDP chieftain was returning from Efon where he had supervised the conduct of the party’s local government congress.

    The local government congress was part of the process leading to the party’s governorship primary slated for May 8.

    Oni’s captors contacted family members and demanded a ransom of N30 million.

    Ekiti PDP Publicity Secretary, Mr. Jackson Adebayo confirmed the release of Oni to reporters yesterday.

    Adebayo said Oni was set free by his abductors on Tuesday night.

    He was however silent on whether any ransom was paid by the party or the victim’s family before he was let off the hook.

    Adebayo said the party is happy that Oni returned home unhurt and reunited with his family.

     

  • A poison of freedom and fiscal flowers

    There is a joke in contemporary circuits that the battle for Nigeria’s freedom would be fought and won in social space and by the cudgels and blades of ‘woke’ youth. This notion sprouts from ideological fields at home and abroad, where pasture, copse and tributary of thought, flourish from sickly seeds of violence and death.

    Being ‘woke’ is next to being a deity in contemporary youth circuits. It confers on the ‘woke’ a colossal ego, an exaggerated sense of awareness and idolatry of fawning peer. Hence the revolutionary chants wielded to inflame the polity via Facebook, Twitter, and shades of mainstream and manipulable media.

    Beneath the radical chants, however, subsists an immoderate hankering for money, fast cars and other material things. This translates to a morbid race against time, to acquire wealth by ‘woke’ young assassins, internet scammers (Yahoo Boys), and prostitutes.

    Lest we forget the gangs of ‘woke’ political thugs, human rights activists, ‘youth leaders,’ public officers, pen robbers, armed robbers and thieves comprising the nation’s youth.

    Due to perceived trashiness and philosophical harlotry of the journalist, this band of youths do not leave the battle for their freedom from Nigeria’s predatory ruling class to the press.

    However, several youths find their freedom in money and yet lose it to the legal tender, every day. Money changes everything. Every hour, it turns thousands who could have overcome its darkness into eternal addicts to the base and inane.

    For the love of the naira, thousands lose their souls and their lives every day. Man and woman, father and mother, son and daughter, privileged and pauper, engage in the pursuit of money to conquer poverty and be free.

    Cowardice is what we should conquer. Cowardice enslaves all to mean and murderous politicians. It cripples the rage of impoverished youth to the wiles of vicious political parties and public officers.

    While it is appreciable that the incumbent ruling class’s failings stem from its mental, ethical tuberculosis, it becomes worrisome to see the youth bound to its leash.

    An inordinate lust for money enslaves the youth, and cowardice sustains their allegiance to tormentors in the political class.

    A man is either free or not. There can be no apprenticeship for freedom, argues Amiri Baraka, U.S. author and political activist. But Baraka’s wisdom strikes no chord with Nigeria’s ‘woke’ cowardly youth.

    The lure of absolute cowardice cannot be spurned, because it comes wrapped in bouquets of freedoms and fiscal flowers. Hence the youths embrace it.

    Absolute cowardice is their door to freedom. From its thresholds, they seek glimpses of proverbial Eden. Vistas of ancient paradise illumine their world, from modern perversions like DSTV/Multichoice’s Big Brother Naija (BBN) amorality show, private parties and basement orgies, political hooliganism to mention a few.

    In the living theatre of their world, there is no lull between dreams and realisation, toil and rewards; morbid fantasies mutate into instant visibility.

    The afflictions of contemporary youth are akin to medieval Rome’s imperial masques: charades, gruesome sensuality, horseplay and inquisition.

    But while Roman emperors made sexual personae an artistic medium, Nigerian public officers go several steps further; they elevate murderous lust, carnal and ethical perversions to a religion. Touting these as modern forms of freedom, they urge the youth to assemble for worship in their temples of filth.

    The youth, of course, become enthusiastic worshippers in their tormentors’ holy place: think ‘card-carrying’ members of Nigeria’s doctrinal brothels, or political parties if you like. Too many youths have given their souls for shackled forms of freedom.

    In Nigeria, the youth are stage machinery, mannequins, minor actors and decor, in the ruling class’s theatre of the absurd. Considering the antics of BBN inmates, southern cultists, Boko Haram insurgents and murderous herdsmen/terrorists of the north, the lives contemporary youth demonstrate the inadequacies of our modern myth of freedom.

    Nigeria suffers the affliction purportedly free, ‘woke’ youths, who are flummoxed and sickened by their alleged freedom. Sexual liberation, political irresponsibility, financial independence, our deceitful mirage, ends in lassitude inertness.

    Freedom and responsibility are utopian to the Nigerian youth. It does not matter if he is a presiding governor, a legislator, civil society thug, press hooligan or ‘woke’ social media warrior; his afflictions are homogeneous to his roots and pop culture.

    With money, he assumes the integrity of gnomes and adopts the random metamorphosis of greed. Without money, he resists the evolution of worldly experience. He embraces multiplicity of wile, theatrical guise and becomes anarchic, often in tandem with the whims of the ruling class’s wildest bunch.

    Theatrical mutation and excessive self-love, seductive principles of modern youth, can never be reconciled with growth and morality. Contemporary performances of the youth in social and political theatres emphasise Nigeria’s descent from a moral cloud into dissolute fenland.

    Freedom of persona is magical but often destabilising. If married to an excessive lust for money, it becomes very frightening and overwhelming. Ultimately it destroys.

    Like OkwudibaNnoli notes, it uplifts and crushes, enhances and debases, exhilarates and disenchants, dignifies and dehumanizes, enlightens and blinds, unites and divides. Thus under the influence of money, humaneness and the quest for the collective good are ferociously smothered by disruptive and selfish considerations.

    Consequently, justice, freedom, equality, dignity and other human rights, are sacrificed on the altar of the perennial rat-race for the accumulation of money.

    More worrisome is the reality of presumably ‘woke’ youth being unquestioningly docile to the power of money. Their loyalty and sympathies are often hawked to tyrants who treat them like dogs on a leash.

    This is emblematic of Gustave Le Bon’s philosophy of ‘The Crowd,’ which was valued not only by Pareto, Freud, Mussolini, and de Gaulle, but even by Horkheimer and Adorno. Le Bon contends that the type of  “hero dear to crowds will always have the semblance of a Caesar. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear…Should the strength of an authority be intermittent, the crowd, always obedient to its extreme sentiments, passes alternately from anarchy to servitude, and from servitude to anarchy.”

    • To be continued