BY SUNNY IGBOANUGO
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Let me start this story with a digression. All the same it’ll be relevant and tied to the main import of the subject matter. It happened some decades back. Then yours truly was the Correspondent of The Guardian in Enugu. But I was quite influential – as influential as journalists in those days were – a small man in a powerful garb. Working with The Flagship of Nigerian journalism made you even more so – an important man. Its identity opened steel doors and elevated you to sit at table with the high and mighty, who not only respected you, but feared you too.
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But much as I operated at that top level, again to emphasise, not by my power, but on the wings of that powerful medium, I didn’t entertain myself with the seducing thought that I had arrived at the port of destination for the Nigerian big man. I still recognised where I truly belonged. That place was with the people
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So, I could safely say I was at the centre of activities, not only in that state, but even much of the South East in general given the strategic place of Enugu. In fact, my office at Number 23 Edinburgh Road, was the accurate example of what the late Igwe Osita Agwuna depicted to be the picture of palace of a true king. Such a palace, he said should never be surrounded with a wall, to enable both humans and spirits have free ingress in and egress out.
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I remember the likes of Asisi Asobie, the President of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), who used it as their war room to plot their battles with Umoru Gomwalk, then Sole Administrator of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) – one of the many outlandish features of the Sani Abacha junta, arguably, Nigeria’s most despotic and brutal military leader.
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Politicians, visiting and resident, professionals, visiting and resident – all manner of people strolled in, individually either to meet and greet or engage in other businesses. Labour leaders, students and their leaders, injured citizenry – everyone came to meet and greet, lay their complaints, submit their petitions or engage in other businesses.
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That is how I came across the story I’m about to narrate now. Sometime within this period, Enugu was awash with some of the most bizarre tales, ever conceived and contemplated by human mind. It was a period of mindless police brutality. It came in different forms, shapes and sizes. Many of them came to my table as victims sought solutions.
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In one instance, one of my cousins came to my office one afternoon, highly agitated. What was the problem? A squad of policemen swooped on their compound the previous night and picked up two of his elder brothers, he narrated, tears welling up. What did they do? Nothing! Police just sighted them sitting idly in front of their house and dragged them into their vehicle and sped off.
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Immediately, I ascertained where they were being detained, I set off. At the Abakpa police station, the DPO, put up the usual deadpan no-nonsense expression – their entry point for business. His story was that my cousins were raided at a “dark spot,” where they were smoking Igbo. For evidence, he called on one of his men to bring the “exhibit.” Soon an empty can of shoe polish was produced. Opening it, the DPO displayed stubs of wrapped, half-finished hemps.
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Of course, I wasn’t a novice. I understood the picture clearly and what he was driving at. But I was also prepared. I betrayed no emotions. In my mind I was already calculating the number of times the same exhibit would have been on display in so many other cases. So, my next line was to ask what would be the next step.
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Can I take them on bail? That was my next move as I decided to play along. I knew what to expect toeing this line, having been a customer in terms of how many times I intervened in other similar cases. I could see the self-induced anger. I wasn’t showing the right attitude expected of one whose wards were criminals. After all he had shown me the evidence in the stubs of Indian hemps, which was supposed to convince me to that effect. I was too relaxed and confident instead of being scared, diffident and panicky.
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I watched him flare up and go into self-induced rage. As he vibrated on top of his voice, almost accusing me of being their patron in crime, I just stood up and walked out of his office. The unschooled would have started begging. That pretended anger was supposed not only to cow, but to deflate me and set me on for the next thing – negotiation.
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I simply went upstairs to see the Area Commander who was a friend of the media and particularly my personal buddy. After giving me the usual chummy welcome, he simply burst into hearty laughter halfway into my narration of the encounter downstairs. You no tell am who you be? I knew and my friend knew that I understood everything. There had been so many debates and encounters between us about the subject matter for him not to understand where I was coming from.
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He simply put a call to the supposed angry DPO and invited him to the party? I could see the shock in his eyes as he walked into the office to witness the hearty, convivial atmosphere between the man he had just walked out of his office and his boss. You no know Sunny from the powerful Guardian? Sunny is our friend o. Na him dey help us fight crime now!
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That did it. I not only left that office with my cousins, the supposed criminals much later, I left as a friend of the same man, who had almost called me a patron of criminals just some hours earlier. There was no need for us to push the subject. All of us knew that no crime was committed. I agreed with my new friend that profiling was part of crime-fighting – his drift and excuse for his previous action. I also agreed on the enormity of crime and the need to employ peculiar solutions in peculiar circumstances to fight crimes. I just had to agree – just for peace to reign.
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Each of us knew the true story. He knew I didn’t believe him. It would have been a different story if I wasn’t from the powerful Guardian, with a friend upstairs. With someone else, that allegation could have stood and those “exhibits” in the shoe polish can would have counted. In fact, it could have graduated from smoking Igbo to armed robbery or any other imaginable crimes, for which those my cousins could have added to the list of Awaiting Trial Mates in some prisons somewhere if they failed to do the needful.
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Those exhibits stood in so many other numerous cases as proofs against several victims that were so unlucky at that time. The case I just narrated, is one of the countless other cases that came in different shapes and forms at that time. Imagine a case in which policemen would hire a commercial bus, arrive at a bus-stop and pick passengers, only to discharge them at police stations as criminals.
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Those who could not afford the prescribed amount – N500, N1,000 or N5,000, depending on the going price for the day imposed as bail fees, simply became true criminals and were detained permanently. Nobody even had the heart for pity to free anyone – you’re just a commodity – too bad if you had no money – your fault, not theirs.
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I won’t be surprised if many of them are still in prison till date, victims of trumped-up charges. It was when I was so inundated with multiple complaints in this regard that I upped the ante. One day I decided to see the police commissioner. Unlike the Area Commander, the CP was not truly a friend, but unlike the DPO, he was also not uncouth or unfriendly either.
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In the paper I filled, I had deliberately tagged my purpose for the visit: Police Brutality in Enugu. It was after a long back and forth, questions and answers, arguments and counters, that the police boss, told me what I’m about to share with you now, my compatriots, which I believe is quite germane in what we are contending with as a country today, at this moment – evidence!
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Here is what he said. Hope you have the heart to contain it. Laugh or cry, if you would! “If you truly want to be a patriotic citizen, there is only one way to help the police,” he said. I waited. Then the bombshell. “If you see any policeman bullying anybody taking bribe or engaging in any fraud, drag him to me and see if I won’t punish him.”
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I simply stood up, looked hard into his face and walked out. Of course, I took in the smirk in his face and the smile playing at the corners of his lips. They spoke more than words. They were signs of triumphant expression. He believed that he had won the argument and defeated me, his opponent. Now imagine me, an ordinary, bloody civilian dragging a policeman with a gun, probably high on something, by his trousers to his boss to prove that he was taking bribe. Tell me the difference between that and jumping from the last floor of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
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This is the case of Dele Farotimi today. The mantra in certain quarters since the palaver with the fiery activist erupted on December 3, when he was spirited away from his office in Lekki part of Lagos, is that he must prove his case that the Nigerian judiciary as an institution is rotten. He must produce evidence, they chorus.
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Meanwhile, many of those elevating this mantra to a deafening din, know that the institution is as rotten as the bloated stomach of a dead dog. Yet, they sing along.
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They pretend they didn’t hear Ahmed Bulkachuwa – that Senator who regaled the whole world through the Senate chambers during the 2023 valedictory session about how he “encroached on the freedom and independence” of his wife.
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They pretend they did not understand that the man was simply relating how he had a hand in making his wife, a judge, who later rose to preside over the Court of Appeal bend backwards to skew justice, just to “help” his colleagues.
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They probably did not hear Rochas Okorocha, another Senator, who also pled with Godswill Akpabio and Ahmed Lawn at the same forum to teach him the magic that made them return to the Red Chambers.
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They’re probably struck with Mongolian Idiocy Syndrome, not to know what the ex-Imo governor and their colleague was driving at was to point out the apparently manifest corruption in the judiciary – the same crime for which Farotimi now his neck on the guillotine.
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Recall that Akpabio, now Senate President and Lawan, his predecessor, each contested against President Bola Tinubu for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the National Assembly and against the backdrop of a clear law barring them from contesting any other election within the same election circle, returned to contest for the same chambers. Has anyone explained that magic Okorocha, Senator from Imo State sought yet?
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They either close their eyes or bid their ears be deaf to the clear evidence of officers, politicians and influential people flooding the judiciary bench with their sons, daughters and relatives, in clear violation and systematic rape of the system, for which the likes of Chidi Odinkalu have developed frog voices from daily shouting.
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Less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court verdict on the 2023 presidential election, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammed, only next in command to then Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Ayo Ariwoola, captured almost the same thing Dele said in his book, only that he did not mean it when he said that the judiciary leadership stank, but was only saying that it didn’t smell roses. So, they are in search of evidence.
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Just like that police boss that demanded of me to drag corrupt policemen to him before he could take the required action to save the citizens of Enugu from their nightmare, Farotimi’s adversaries, many of them the lawyers through whom the massive corruption in the judiciary were carried out are also searching for the same thing – Proof! They, like the Enugu police boss know what they seek is almost unattainable.
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They know the only way Farotimi could prove the rot is to perhaps round up the culprits at the crime scene. In other words, they want him to drag the corrupt, bribe-taking policemen to that police boss. How would he do that? You could always also recognise in their miens the same triumphant smirk, mimicking that police boss as I left his office in utter disgust as they demand of the same EVIDENCE, today. Just like that day!
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Well, by their standard and prediction, Dele’s day with the jailor is assured. But by the time Dele walks into the jail house, chained arms and legs, because he had no evidence, the mantra of these antagonists would have been complete. So, their joy. Yet to many others, the clanging sound of the chains would also be a reminder that Nelson Mandela and many other global greats, also walked this path, heads unbowed.
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Interestingly, did many of those who cheered and jeered to the melody from the chains, as Mandela took that walk to Roben Island, in South Africa not also line up to witness a different melody as the same man waltzed through the same path, 21 years after, this time, without the chains – the melody of thunderous ovations and the clatter of excitedly eager tongues? Though some of them were denied the chance of witnessing it, their children represented them. Only this time, they were the ones who watched with heads, bowed!
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So, it might be with Dele Farotimi. Those who cheer and jeer today in triumphalism, should not be quick to forget that even in Nigeria, there are a surfeit of examples to authenticate that inscription on the body of that lorry labouring through the ditches on Lagos-Benin expressway – No Condition is Permanent. So might it be with Dele. The irony of life!
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Culled from Sunny Igboanugo’s Facebook Wall, ‘The Tiny Voice!’
Editor
- Editor
Editor
Jude Ossai (JP) a veteran journalist is a National Diploma holder in Mass Communication from Ogwashi-Uku Polytechnic Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State. He also studied at Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Enugu and Imo State University, Owerri for his first and second degrees in Mass Communication, respectively.
He writes extensively on politics, crime, corruption, climate change, healthcare, human rights, social justice, among others.
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Jude Ossai (JP) a veteran journalist is a National Diploma holder in Mass Communication from Ogwashi-Uku Polytechnic Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State. He also studied at Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Enugu and Imo State University, Owerri for his first and second degrees in Mass Communication, respectively.
He writes extensively on politics, crime, corruption, climate change, healthcare, human rights, social justice, among others.
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