Opinion

Casualties of Household Violence and Counselling Strategies

Published

4 years ago

April 21, 2021

NewTimes

Modern-day Journalism As A Barrier To National Development

Grace Ego Omoni

In my university days, some stories read in my literature classes still ring a bell today as I hear some other stories in our society today. One of such was that of Henchard, a character in the novel, Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy. In that story, this man of poverty and with the mentality that a wife was the property of the man decided to alleviate his poverty by selling off his wife at a funfair to the surprise of everyone. Yet nobody stopped him. He succeeded in doing so for a peanut!

What a catastrophic, wicked and senseless phenomenon! Are you aware that such inhumanity of man is still being perpetrated today in our society unabated in different dimensions by people who you think are of noble character?

I saw Henchard’s wife and child as casualties of household wickedness in high places. As a teacher who interacted with parents, pupils and students, it has become expedient to narrate to the society some heinous experiences of husbands/fathers in respect of women and children in the families and environment.

People go about condemning the government of her insensitivity to the onslaught of terrorists, bandits, religious bigots, armed robbers, killers and the rest of them. Yet we overlook the inhuman evil being done by husbands/fathers to women and children.
Is it not ridiculous that in this modern time, men still do bizarre things to their wives just as parents and guardians engage in modern-day slavery the way the children are being used and maltreated?

You need to judge for yourself as I narrate some casualties (women/children).

In the early sixties, my lady teacher in my village in the riverine area got married to a young man and relocated to a big town in the North. About two years after, my father’s friend rushed to our house with the then popular Daily Times Newspaper. There they narrated how a man stabbed his wife to death. Behold that woman was my former teacher! A causalty of household violence!
A few years ago, a family with two professors and four children experienced so much violence from the man that the woman decided to call it quits.

This so-called professor used the wife as a punching bag times without number. Her salary was her husband’s property and she had no right to buy anything. She was banned from making friends. A particular day came when he beat her to a coma. For more than one hour, the woman remained motionless. Then, the children were very small and all they did was to cry and cry. They watched their father running up and down the compound.

Eventually, he decided to go and deposit her in the mortuary in the big hospital in the next town. As God would have it, Providence smiled on the poor woman and she came back to life as he was driving down. He warned her not to tell anybody. He did this beating times without number after that incident. Many people see him as either mentally deranged or a schizophreniac.

Apart from terrorizing the wife in the home, the children lived in constant fear with no care. The salary of the woman was for the home including the children from other women but his own salary was for himself alone.

As a young teacher in the early seventies, there was a particular incident that took place in my school. One day, very early in the morning, there was pandemonium. My older colleagues struggled to prevent a woman and some hefty young men from gaining entrance into a class. It was later I learnt that one of the teachers, a full-grown man with a wife and children had a carnal knowledge of a minor of about six years. How did the mother get to know? As she was bathing the child, she noticed that the child had bruises in her private part. She was in pains and upon being questioned she confessed that this teacher who was her uncle had carnal knowledge of her.

Yet another story is the issue of sexual violence. I was privileged to hear this in our counselling class from a renowned professor. This so-called honourable had several wives but decided to be sleeping with one of his daughters; it was a case of incest. All the wives knew this including the mother of the girl. Nobody had the courage to challenge this monster over his wickedness. Instead, these women used this girl to get what they wanted from their husband.

Any time they needed money, they went to the girl being sexually harassed by her biological father. This went on for a long time until the gods visited her. Every night masquerades pursued her until she opened up to her uncle. Believe it or not , this evil stopped after the father was challenged by his family members!

A fifth case was that of a very wealthy young man whose wife was a lawyer but he never allowed the woman to work but she was his punching bag. He also engaged in verbal violence against this beautiful woman until their grown-up son ran to a psychologist for help. In the presence of this woman, the man boasted that he would chop the wife’s head off with a cutlass because she was her property!

A woman was asked why she was no longer living with the husband and she narrated ugly experiences of ugly sexual violence such as forcing her to engage in oral and anal sex.

Now rape is an everyday occurrence in the home. The boys, both teens and young men, rape their siblings, cousins and house helps, impregnate and abort with or without the knowledge of their parents; uncles, bosses and stepfathers make the house maids and apprentices their sex objects. These casualties are cajoled and intimidated never to talk. Just recently, at a seminar, a story was told of how a nine-day- old baby was raped. This is not mere fantasy because there have been several cases of sexual abuse in the home.

In one of the trainings we had with school counsellors, a story was told of how a teacher discovered that a male sibling of about ten years had been abusing his younger sister who was about seven. When their parents were invited by the counsellor, they threatened to sue the school. However, the couple decided to interview the children and discovered that it was true!

Another story is that of infidelity. This was a well-known man in the society and legally married to his wife who trusted him so much. However, this man married another woman secretly and had children with the woman. For a long time, she was unaware only for the children to appear on the day of his burial. It was a rude shock for the legally wedded wife of over forty-five years. The psychological torture was unbearable for the woman. This is one of the things that men do to their wives without remorse.

Before giving some counselling tips, there is the need to talk about child labour and how they become victims and casualties.

The writer is not against children assisting parents to cushion the effects of poor economic background in the family. What I am against are the negative consequences. Imagine a child between 6 and 13 years being sent by their mothers to go and hawk in the streets or the expressways. Imagine the risks involved. On our high ways you see them dashing from one vehicle to another. Many of them have been killed in the process while the girls are raped, impregnated, become single mothers at an early age or forced into marriage unprepared.

There was a case of a girl of about 15 years who was always hawking groundnut in the university campus where I worked. I became interested in her because while her age mates where in school, she would be hawking. I made her my customer. That was how we got talking and I found out that she was pregnant. She was a house help to a family in Lagos and got raped, became pregnant and was sent home. The mother forced her to fend for herself. Who is to blame?

Why are parents leaving their children to become vulnerable to a society that is depraved? Get to the market on market days, what do you see? Boys pushing wheelbarrows to receive paltry amounts from buyers and sellers while the girls are all over the nooks and crannies of the markets hawking articles not more than one or two thousand naira.

Some of them end up being raped in uncompleted buildings, lonely corners or are lured by men who promise to buy everything they are selling; after all, the whole thing in the tray will not cost more than one or two thousand naira. What are the consequences? The children become irregular in school. Many times, they are late and in some cases, they drop out of school. Get to the villages during planting or harvest seasons, most of these children are in the farms helping their fathers.

The situation is worse now since unemployment challenges have risen to a crescendo. Parents reason under the premises that it would be double loss for them to continue sending children to school when those they have trained can neither help their parents nor fend for themselves. So you see the predicaments of our children and the tragedy that has befallen women and children in this generation? Women are being brutalised physically, verbally, harassed sexually and economically.

The same goes for our young girls and even boys. The incidence of child labour, physical violence and sexual abuse and rape is on the increase; children are being deprived of formal education and dropping out of school is now on the increase. This has even resulted in the high rise in cyber fraud, armed robbery, thuggery, prostitution, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, drug trafficking and addiction, human trafficking, selling of human parts, single parenthood, Yahoo syndrome and other cases of juvenile delinquencies. In fact many women who are single choose to be so because of ugly experiences of forced sex.

Counselling Strategies

Parents need to have a positive orientation about their children’s welfare.
Decide on the number of children you will be capable of bringing up.
Parents should be more responsible in the training of the children and should not send them to work to fend for themselves.
Female children should not be sent out to hawk or to work as house helps.
Mothers should be more vigilant to ensure that the relationship between father and daughter or between brothers, uncles, nephews and cousins does not result in sexual intimacy.
Parents especially mothers should be their children’s best friends especially with the females.
Girls should be given the tips for saying no to sex without being rude.
Parents teach your children to be contented with wealth and material things.
Have time for interaction with your children in the home.
Parents, provide for your children. Do not exchange their education for transients for better days are ahead.
Report cases of rape. Take the child to the hospital immediately. This will reduce the high rate of sexually transmitted infection including HIV/AIDS as well as unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

For cases of domestic violence, women should

Ensure that they are economically viable. Be independent financially.
Love should not blind you no matter how wealthy your man is. Do something that can bring in money to the house.
Support the home financially especially with providing the children with their little demands
Do not get into marriage without knowing your spouse’s idiosyncrasies. Do not take his fits of anger during courtship for granted.
Encourage constant friendly communication with your husband.
Do not take threats for granted
Report cases of beating and intimidation to the appropriate quarters (welfare offices).
Your life is precious; when your husband is showing signs of aggression, protect yourself by leaving the scene.
Discuss in detail how best to handle your finances.

Casualties are not only found in hospitals and in accident scenes.Women suffering from domestic violence, female children who are so vulnerable to the males and children used for child labour by parents, guardians and apprentices are all victims or household causalities.

Nongovernmental organizations especially those dealing with gender-based violence, religious bodies, teachers, counsellors and the government are to put all hands on deck to end or reduce to the barest minimum the issues discussed in this article.

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Opinion

Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

Published

5 hours ago

December 22, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

Published

1 day ago

December 21, 2024

NewTimes

Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State

Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

Opinion

Burning Issues: (FCT Minister And Paulosa) (2)

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

NewTimes

Prof. Tony Afejuku

By Tony Afejuku

The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.

Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.

We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.

Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.

Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.

Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.

I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.

Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.

As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.