Hurray, Dr Ganiyat Popoola, traumatised and kidnapped on December 27, 2023 is finally released 30 October 2024 after 11 months. Thanks to all including the NMA. Please repeat for all kidnapped victims.
The ‘Curse of the uniform’ discussed last week is further exemplified by the killing of a musician recently. Why are supervising senior officers not held accountable for subordinates’ abnormal activities? They should be tried together. This will stop the ‘Uniform Murder Crime Wave’ immediately. Juniors fear the ‘OGA AT THE TOP’! Beyond guardroom trial, we demand senior officials/officers to also be held accountable and charged with ‘culpable negligence of duty to closely supervise subordinates and failure to instil discipline and self-control and to prevent an illegal act.
Learn from the US school gun crime epidemic where government now prosecutes parents alongside their murderous children, both disgraced in orange prison suits, handcuffs and leg irons. Now parents will help prevent gun crime. The UK government should prosecute parents in the epidemic of knife crime related to no father-figure, single-parent families and youth, school and neighbourhood gang crime.
Similarly, but at a higher governance level are politicians not taught good manners, dignity, comportment and respect for every citizen voter. Perhaps orientation is only about how to spend the huge salaries and perks of office? The arrogance of Nigerian public office holder and even official drivers knows no financial, moral, physical or mental or Highway Code boundaries. The self-acclaimed self-styled excellency, distinguished & honourable prefixes mostly fail woefully to describe them. They constantly disappoint us with their mediocre performance and social arrogance established solely with huge amounts of the people’s money while we have 10+m out-of-school children.
This behaviour has made too many of our politicians pompously ‘Un-Excellent, Un-Distinguished and Dis-Honourable’ and now we have a House of Representatives ‘Most Dis-Honourable Member Award 2024’ winner. He inflicted harm and also threatened to inflict Grievous Bodily Harm, GBH, including murderous ‘disappearance’ on an Uber driver. All Nigeria REJECTS HIS APOLOGY. He should be suspended until after the court’s judgement, dismissed in disgrace or forced to resign, be arrested, and prosecuted. He is half Russian- does this interest DSS?
If and when found guilty of a felony OF HARM, GRIEVIOUS BODILY HARM OR THREAT OF MURDER AND [a new one unknown to law] ‘DISAPPEARANCE’ under Criminal Code Acts sections 320, 335, 355 he will be liable to IMPRISONMENT FOR 3, 7, 14 years. Thereafter he should be banned from holding public office and government contracts and should do 100 hours of Community Service.
The parade of 67 under-aged children in court is a disgrace to Nigeria’s police and criminal justice system. ‘JUVENILE COURT WHICH DENIES THE MEDIA ACCESS’ is a CHILD RIGHT to anonymity as the child is not mature enough to be fully responsible for aberrant behaviour requiring a court case. The juvenile court eliminates sensationalism and prevents mental scars. Privacy is the right of the child and can only be guaranteed in a juvenile court. Worse, apparently some children face the death sentence. Seriously? Is this the terrible headline that Nigeria wants to be known for, added to ‘Nigeria abandons 10+million out of school children and under-educating an entire generation of Nigerian children’?
No matter their crime including ‘Rioting for a foreign country’, it is inhumane that they have been incarcerated in Nigeria’s notorious prison conditions from August to November. Shame. Note, UK was jailing convicted rioters within 2-4 week of the riot. Justice delayed is justice denied.
A lawyer in the case said on television that the accused were not children. If he lied, he should be prosecuted. Also, was ‘mass fainting’ genuine or rehearsed – another ‘court tragi-comedy’ play-acting plaguing our courts when politicians and those accused of financial crimes routinely feign a faint or other illness to delay justice. Note that those politicians, claiming to be too sick for trial, but were never too sick to steal. Lawyers worldwide seriously coach clients on ‘acting on the court stage’.
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The children were actually punishingly undernourished and some could genuinely have collapsed. Shame on us all. However, some of this ‘67 Court Performance’ could have been engineered for the court stage worthy of a ‘Nigerian Judicial Oscar Nomination’. If so, the defence lawyers should be prosecuted for ‘deception’. Beyond ‘Humane justice for the 67 and Presidential Order of RELEASE’ we should get them and 10-million others into quality school, now!
Let us add FAKE MEDICAL COURT PERFORMANCES to Nollywood for a new category of Annual Nollywood Awards – ‘Most Dramatic Court Deception-2024’. And the winner[s] is/are ……….!
But look at the FALSE outrage and condemnation from ‘Northern Coalition’ politicians who for 30 years have serially failed to send to school and educate these same 67 children and 10+m other out of school children’ and vulnerable street children who are now in court as ‘political cannon fodder’. The political architects of this education failure should be ashamed and face court for ‘Failing to provide a conducive learning and living environment’ for 10m children. The politicians’ own children do not riot or rot in prison or feign a faint in court. Why were those 67 in a position to be arrested? The answer is because we have a consumptive politics and not a service politics. How else can we explain this degree of abandonment of the education system – the cause of the ‘case of 67 children’?
