Minister Ojo: New bureaucratic delays in ‘Renewing or New Passports’ demonstrate how a good beginning can collapse into ‘deliberate of accidental’ administrative culpable failure. Please SCRAP THE LGA LETTER REQUIREMENT which has mutated into a corruption scam with delays and costs and maybe apologise for failure to anticipate?
Sixty-one year-old Farouk Lawan’s timeline to jail: Four-term House of Representatives member 1999-2015 [from 37yrs old, almost a permanent member?] until accused in 2012/3 [11 years ago], as chairman of committee investigating fuel subsidy fraud, demanding and/or receiving [under his hat?] $500,000 from Femi Otedola to remove his company’s name from a fraud list – a paradox. Otedola recorded him. After failure to blame Otedola for corrupting an ‘innocent’ Lawan, he, Lawan, was sentenced after eight years in court to seven years jail, later reduced to five years on appeal, in 2021, and forced to pay $500,000 to the federal government. The Supreme Court’s confirmation of conviction is relatively fast. Amen. Eleven years from crime to definite punishment, less than two years at Supreme Court. But despite pressures justice faced, delay machinations by ‘legal illuminati’ and this delivery of justice is still too slow to deter others.
Note the ‘N100 billion fraud cases’ and ‘lesser thefts’ with Lawan-minded politicians and government officials, some hindering justice with technicalities and some still undiscovered. Too many slow cases are winding through the courts, hampered, delayed and diverted by ‘any ‘SAN-itary means necessary’. What is the cost/punishment ratio? $500,000= N5,000,000,000 at current rates of N1000+/-N200:$1.He is being jailed for taking $274/day[N274,000]x5 years – an expensive criminal.
The citizens have victories as Pastor’ Feyi Daniels is sentenced to life imprisonment for two rapes. How many more were in his dreams for the future from his congregation and how many will nightly torment him from memory? 0, 100? He also predicted an ‘Interim Government’ displacing PBAT. There as a conviction of a rape doctor and an academic for sexual harassment. We must congratulate and encourage the legal teams, NGOs, specialised police units, medical and social services especially of Lagos and other states who ‘TAKE RAPE SERIOUSLY’ and, instead of intimidating and insulting rape complainants into embarrassed silence, welcome, comfort, embrace, protect and guide them towards justice.
The Minister for Police Affairs Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim must bring Police Investigation methodology and laboratories into 2024. Violated and socially disbelieved and victimised girls and women appear at security services, police stations and clinics everywhere. But they face an archaic, crime-insensitive police service with no ‘POLICE INVESTIGATION LABORATORY SERVICE’ backup. International television news, and Crime Scene Investigations (CSI), Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) etc. teach Fellow Nigerians the norm in what crime investigation should be, not nuclear physics. Nigerians maintain investigative laboratories like Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and food and beverages laboratories across the private sector and institutions – universities, polytechnics, IITA, etc. Are Police Pathology Labs internally sabotaged with diversion of funds? There are thousands of unemployed laboratory technicians sadly selling foodstuff because the laboratories do not exist to employ them. There is so much unsolved crime because THERE IS NOT EVEN COMMON FINGERPRINTING used in UK since 1858 AND STILL NOT USED BY NIGERIAN POLICE routinely who do not have a PROPER PHOTO DATABASE OF CRIMINALS.
The police must enter the 21st Century, 2024 and budget for best quality SON-approved POLICE LABORATORIES, FINGERPRINT, & PHOTO [MUGSHOT] & TATTOO DATABASES on national and state level as well, obviously, with adequate financial injection, relevant modern laboratory training in police colleges and upgrade to meet the 2024 need of victims of rape, robbery, bodily harm, kidnapping and murder.
There is need for widespread introduction and familiarisation of a ‘STANDARDISED RAPE PROTOCOL’. Such a protocol is on Google, adaptable for the local environment. Acute rape cases are tragic and urgent and clearly expose the police and crime lab as deficient in their attitude and training capacity to properly secure and document the crime scene. I remember the hundreds of politicians, media and onlookers police tramping all over my first cousin, late Funsho Williams’ upstairs landing where he was murdered. No crime scene restrictions activities. Ditto for Uncle Bola Ige. Does any police station have a ‘ PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION KIT’ to secure the crime scene, duck-tape, plastic gloves and shoe-wraps to prevent contamination and evidence plastic bags and cameras [every inspector has a cell-phone with camera capabilities] and FINGERPRINTING SET to take and secure evidence of a quality and quantity that can get quick clear convictions.
This chronic, dare I say congenital, persistent police laboratory crime scene deficit in collecting court-worthy evidence allows many cases to fail to reach court, leaving many victims suffering two assaults – the rape and then the robbery of getting justice through the fault of the investigating police. This makes many victims back away from the police/medical/justice system and live raped and robbed with no justice, and likely to see their rapist daily, in offices, pulpits, homes and streets.
The victims and supporters must not be treated with embarrassment but encouragement, support, welcoming and being embraced. A recent rape victim must be rushed to see a medical doctor and police must take immediate possession of clothes, bedding etc. especially as now DNA is available. Do not rush them to the bathroom ‘to purify the victim or prevent pregnancy’ before medical exam as that washes away the evidence.
To demonstrate the stupidity of ‘mis-pastoring’ sometimes, what has God got to do with a ‘pastor’ ‘mis-predicting’ football match results between Nigeria and Cameroon?
