Flies on the Wall of Evil

Discovering Hidden Routes

We too easily see a place through one perspective, but last week, because of our proximity to Century City in Cape Town, we decided to walk a network of routes from Rugby to the Canal Walk Shopping Centre, which had been the focus of our visits many times before.

After visiting the shopping centre, on our walk back, we bought MyCiTi bus passes in anticipation of using the public bus rapid transit service that we had been shy of approaching in the preceding seven years of staying in Cape Town. However, it was a panel of pictures showing how Century City had evolved since the 1990s that caught our attention, though we were too tired to explore further.

Century City: The History of Century City

A Second Chance

In our move to Pinelands, we could have dismissed this opportunity again, but proximity once more compelled us, not so much to walk it, but to get an Uber from Pinelands to the shopping centre, explore the walkways of Century City, and then walk through Rugby and Milnerton to Woodbridge Island.

It was during this plan that we became flies on the wall of two encounters that left us saddened by the malicious and malevolent intentions of others.

An Uncomfortable Ride

The Uber that took us to the shopping centre was supposed to be a cool, comfortable ride, but for the duration of the journey, the driver was in conversation on the phone. I did not understand anything of what he was saying, but could hear bits about sums of money being pushed about. You could immediately recognise he was involved in some sort of deal.

His name was Trust, but I would pray that no one, and especially Uber, should be trusting him. Had we known what he was up to, we would not have trusted his picking us up either. Whilst we were delivered to our destination safely, he was speaking Shona, one of the major languages of Zimbabwe, which he probably assumed none of us understood, but Brian did. With whoever he was chatting to, they were planning a number of exploitative and manipulative schemes.

Schemes of Exploitation

The first was to register a number of cars with fake identities on the Uber platform, then traffic people from rural areas in Zimbabwe to drive the cars with the aim of paying them poverty or slavery wages as they drove endless hours to bring money home for these chaps with pretensions to being crime bosses.

In the words of Trust, and I paraphrase, "Just put a plate of food before them and they'll be happy as Larry." They had every intention to mistreat, abuse, exploit, and deal wickedly with whoever they were able to entice with the bright lights of South Africa.

A Difficult Decision

I learnt all this after our ride, to which I suggested Brian should have exited with a greeting in Shona, just to let him know we were onto him. Obviously, there was no possibility of us giving him five stars for his service, even if he did not carry out his evil intentions, but we were left in a quandary as to whether to report this encounter to Uber and how to frame what we understood had happened.

Another Overheard Conversation

No sooner had we begun our walk beyond the territory of the shopping centre into Century City proper than there was another wheeler and dealer on the phone. I do not think he was planning a new magic trick for his next performance, but he probably works in one of the offices in Century City. He confided in his interlocutor on the other end of the call about how he had to try to make four million South African rand disappear.

I doubt we'll recognise him, as we only heard him as he walked by us in the opposite direction, and the disappearance of the money can only pertain to him having view of, or access to, that money somewhere in an organisation and scheming to thieve or embezzle it.

The Audacity of Evil

It did make us wonder about both the audacity of calumny and the recklessness of incriminating conversations that others think no one is hearing. These are thoughts that should never emerge as words spoken when there is a conscience alive in us, even if barely so. In both cases, we saw the clear sign that the love of money is indeed the root of all evil.

It is quite likely there are many instances of human trafficking, people exploitation, and embezzlement as we visit places around Cape Town that we are totally oblivious to. Yesterday, I gave a tip to a server in an establishment where the personification of Cruella de Vil superintended with vicious verbiage; the server's deep gratitude would suggest something I am unready to countenance.

The question is, who will stop these evil people before they implement their rotten plans?

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

A passport adrift, the owner, a gift

Goodbye passport!

“Please, respect me.” That is what she said from the bedroom where she had sequestered herself, having been seen from the car park barely half an hour earlier by my partner as he picked up a passport that appeared to have been flung out of a window on one of the higher floors of our apartment block.

I know people can be going through a lot of things, unexplainable or inexplicable, but it is impossible to fully understand the issues people face. I say this because it was an utterly bizarre situation.

Brian, on returning to our apartment this afternoon, saw a document land in front of him. He picked it up and realised it was a South African passport. As he examined it, he scanned the façade of the apartment block to see which window it might have come from, and in the corner of one window, he saw a lady; he waved to her, and she waved back. He even waved the passport at her, and she must have been waving goodbye to the passport.

No online footprint

I saw the passport, and it became clear how important the document was; it had a recently obtained Schengen visa with a year’s validity. We thought whoever might have lost that passport would be in turmoil once they realised it was missing. We searched Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Instagram but found no sign of the person.

If there was ever a time you needed a searchable online presence, it is now. We contacted our apartment landlord to find out how to share information with the residents of the building, and meanwhile, Brian went up to the apartment where he suspected the lady he had waved to was. No one came to the door except a young man claiming to be her brother. It was not definitive enough for us to give him the passport.

No proof of ownership

So, we went back up with him in the hope of confirming that the lady he saw earlier was the rightful owner of the passport, but she refused to come out of her room. However, while we were speaking with her brother, she made the statement quoted at the beginning.

Obviously, as gentlemen, we had no intention of invading her privacy or causing her distress; at the same time, we could not part with the document without a secure transfer to the owner or a responsible authority, such as the facilities management team of the apartment complex. In extremis, we will have to hand the document over to a police station.

The facilities management team suggested we put the passport in their letterbox, but it was insecure; we simply did not have the heart to part with the document that easily.

Consider the reasons

However, it made us question why the lady was not eager to get her passport back and whether she had deliberately thrown it out of the window out of pique or total disinterest in the visa, which had been obtained for her against her wishes.

This brings us back to the idea that people might be experiencing much more than a seemingly great opportunity suggests. Maybe she is afraid of travelling to an unfamiliar place, and I understand how daunting that can be.

Then there are instances of young women being forced into criminal activities, either as victims of human trafficking or acting as drug mules. You can never tell. Losing a passport like that might even save someone from an unimaginable fate at customs or border controls abroad.

Perhaps, the best course of action is to hand the passport over to the police so they can assist her if something suspicious is occurring. We tried to help as considerate Good Samaritans, but found ourselves in a difficult situation, and honestly, just surrendering it to the police seems the simplest solution.

Postscript

We had a torrid night, thinking the worst of the situation that the lady might be under the influence of criminal gangs who might attempt a home invasion to demand the passport, before teaching us an unforgettable lesson.

We also decided to take the passport to the nearest police station in the morning. As I called an Uber cab ride when I stepped into the elevator to see a Frenchman ask if we were in a numbered apartment.

He happened to be the husband, and he showed me the identity card of the lady on his phone. I invited him into the apartment, and as he was narrating his helplessness at the plight of his wife, he broke down.

She had thrown the passport out of the window and had some as yet undiagnosed mental health issues, which her parent attributed to some spiritual gift she has. Well, every gift is under the control of the gifted, that is scripture without equivocation. If your gift controls you, we are a different territory of personality disorder and whatever that entails.

We advised him to seek the best professional and medical help he could find, and he should approach this as a Westerner rather than trying to understand the cultural differences that might handicap him.

Having handed him the passport, we heaved a sigh of relief. On our return home, there was an ambulance in the car park, and we saw the husband in the lift with the medics. We have no idea what might have happened; we just hoped all would turn out right.

Lost in Moss Side

Thinking of the estates of yore

The night of the first Nigel Benn vs. Chris Eubank boxing match, I arrived at London Heathrow on a business trip to get computer kit and software for NextStep Limited, a desktop publishing outfit in which I had a 30% stake along with a majority stakeholder who was a lawyer and a director of the United Bank of Africa. This was the 18^th of November 1990 and Margaret Thatcher was on her way out. Nowadays, I get mistaken for Chris Eubank.

Totally unaware of where I was going, I had some addresses to doorstep for the week or so that I would be in the UK. Out to West Ham, I went and my former schoolmate no longer lived at that address, so I made it back into London on the tube and then the bus to Hordle Promenade North in Peckham, an estate in my total naivety at almost 10:00 PM with £1,500 in my breast pocket.

I knocked on the nondescript door for more than 10 minutes, the tumult of excited television viewers inside meant I could not be heard and then my friend who no longer lived there but was watching the boxing match with his cousins came to the door as if to leave for his home and was met with my visage. Surprise and shock, he became my host for the fortnight of my stay, his place way out in Surbiton.

Peckham over 30 years ago was a different place from what it is today, one could say the housing estates of that time, a habitue of drugs, crime, and many other vices are centuries behind what it has become. A few days over a decade after my adventurous visit, on the 27^th of November 2000, Damilola Taylor lost his life to a stabbing in a stairwell of the North Peckham Estate. In early 1991, I did live on Sumner Estate for a few months, after my second return to the UK.

A long time from Gunchester

Earlier this evening, I called an Uber cab in the middle of Moss Side in Manchester having decided to go on a wander of discovery from Hulme where I had gone shopping for some African goods. All the while, I was on the phone with Brian, but some 30 years ago, not only would I have never ventured into this locality, but the E-Class Mercedes Benz that picked me up might well have found a forcefully new owner with the driver who dared to arrive to pick his fare fighting for his life.

Such was the issue of gang violence, gun and knife crime, illicit drugs and muggings in inner city estates, the aforementioned being considered one of the most deprived residential areas in Western Europe at that time. Crime in Manchester earned the city the moniker of Gunchester and Madchester.

Even in 1996 when I first visited Manchester, I could not get a black cab to take me from the city centre to a venue in Moss Side. Once again oblivious of the situation and in my naivety, I found a cab ride in a literally battered taxicab that in the old times I would think any self-respecting horse would refuse to draw.

Things have no doubt changed, for I walked down the side of the Heineken Brewery into Moss Side, by some interesting church buildings, the bethel of the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star and across the road was the Church of God of Prophecy where some churchly dressed madams of ethnic origin seemed to be gathering that I had assumptions to which Brian made an unprintable quip.

The Brotherhood of the Cross & Star in Moss Side

Church of God of Prophecy in Moss Side

I think I am lost

I went through a park with the mind that I would get to the upper reaches of Oxford Road and walk down between the University of Manchester and the Manchester Metropolitan University to get home. As I exited the park the street name looked familiar, and I imagined I was not far off known terrain.

Soon, I said to Brian, as I was regaling him with the history of Moss Side, “I think I am lost.” I pressed on up another street, thinking I would soon be in a place of safety before it dawned on me that I was indeed lost.

When I switched on my Google Maps, I had been walking further away from home the only familiar location I could see on the map was a restaurant I visited almost 11 years ago. I got there with a taxi; it was not a walk.

Unbeknownst to me, my mobile phone was also running low on battery, and it was just fortunate that I decided to call Uber because just as I sat in the taxi our journey was about to commence. My phone died.

Many notes to self

You can have your phone with you, but you must always ensure you have enough juice to embark on silly adventures for if you lose the ability to communicate or find your way, you could well be quite endangered. A dead phone is just as good as not having taken your phone with you.

While is it unlikely I would have been so totally lost in Manchester, it would have taken a loss of composure and asking the wrong person to be presented with dire circumstances and we should curtail evil imagination.

Brian who was already aware that I was lost in Moss Side did not get to speak to me until I had returned home some 15 minutes later. I could imagine he would have been beside himself with glee knowing that this usually orderly man had now got himself into a pickle, totally of my own making.

Note to self: Many to write.

City living in the deception of the genteel

Things I should have noticed

A few weeks ago, I missed a Zoom conference that was convened by the local police to chat to occupants of my village complex, I did not at that time consider the importance of it. Then, I could not help but notice the big red notices about Modern Slavery, one in English and the other in Chinese, I just thought it was a general notice.

Then on our village Facebook page, there was a picture of police vans as if they were there to conduct a raid, but there was no update to what it might be. I and maybe a lot of residents of my village complex might have been lured into a sense of genteel out of exclusivity of this neighbourhood to think it is devoid of the vagaries of reprehensible conduct.

Respectable is good cover

Then I am reminded of the fact that just beside our village, something I learnt a few days ago was where the Manchester bomber of May 2017 lived and built his bomb, a few hundred yards away was the home of the serial homosexual sex abuser that could have abused 200 victims, within my village complex in another apartment block was a sex and human trafficking ring exploiting early teenaged girls, one of whom had escaped, and which led to the police raid.

It all begins to make sense, how we need to be observant and sometimes suspicious, quick to notice the strange and make further inquiries of the unusual. Everyone minding their own business to the point of snootiness and snobbery might well leave the innocent open to incomprehensible exploitation.

Curiosity is necessary

You wonder how neighbouring apartments to the sex-ring apartment could not have noticed the comings and goings, the strange faces, and much else. How is it that as we move into the city, we lose that sense of neighbourliness and the neighbourhood, the knowing and conversing with neighbours, not so much to intrude but to create community and some safety in looking out for each other?

It has made us aware that exclusivity and quite sometimes provides a veneer for respectability under which nefarious, notorious, or criminal activity might thrive with everyone none the wiser that like me, we were quite surprised that anything like that could be happening here. The fact is a lot is happening and because we are not curious or just indifferent, heinous crimes take root and thrive. If anything, always strive to know your neighbours and keep an eye out for each other.

All in a weekend

On a binge

My weekend for relaxation is spent watching television if I am not preoccupied with playing around with my computer network test lab that I have not been inspired to attempt much with, in the recent past weeks.

That I find crime investigation programmes interesting is one thing, but in these series are a deeper analysis of human nature, pathology, inclination, persuasion, motive, intentions, or just the plain goodness of humanity that brings a tear to the ear. My emotions run the whole nine yards.

Channel 5 offers my servings and courses of Murder, She Wrote, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU), Columbo, and NCIS. On BBC, I will probably catch up on Death in Paradise or some documentary.

Watching and praying

Whilst many of the plots are apparently fictional depictions, I am sometimes just shocked at things that people can conceive that become crimes, usually murder. A conundrum is presented and brains that have schemed to conceal an act are pitted against brains gathered to unravel the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Watching Law & Order: SVU just now, nothing is fascinating about finding helpless children abandoned in a cage just after one episode where a teenager was sentenced for a hate crime against a transgender person – between pushing and grabbing, taunts, and a fall, she dies. They all died and for any sense of justice to be served, there must be someone, persons, or institutions to hold accountable.

My weekend continues and Whoopi Goldberg is in her element, or maybe I could be doing something else.

All scams are a variation of the same con

The comic I tore

I was walking down to school when I was a student at the Yaba College of Technology in 1983 when a man approached me asking for directions. Our little engagement was what he needed because there was very little I remembered of our encounter apart from the fact that I never got to school, I made my way back home and the money that was in my wallet had somehow become an old comic book.

I had met with a confidence trickster probably with the ability to mesmerise, I can only say that it was providence that guided my having my money in more than one place or I would have had a 7 kilometre walk ahead of me.

Red mercury trickster

Six years on, I was working at IT Systems, a computer services firm when I was called out to fix a problem at a supposed client’s office. Unbeknownst to me, I walked into a meeting where a man was making a business proposal to clear goods at the airport that comprised of suitcases of presumably unprocessed currency that needed to be cleaned up with red mercury. [BBC News: 'Red mercury': Why does this strange myth persist?]

He needed 40,000 Naira to collect his cargo and obtain enough red mercury to process the currency amounting to about 10,000,000 Naira. He was going to cut me in on the deal, but it felt too good to be true. It was a Friday and there followed two sleepless nights in which I agonised about getting the police involved. In the end, I let it go because it would have been trouble, I did not need. Providence was looking on me.

Printing money instead

This was around the time that a classmate of mine who ran a printing press decided the better option was to cut to the chase and print money instead. We all found out when they were paraded on television, I do wonder what happened to him after that.

Many years after that, I met with another old classmate, wily and cunning, he was from when we first met, we were supposed to be friends, but he was trouble, big trouble. Having arrived in England, he applied his wiles to credit card fraud and at a traffic stop, he was cornered by the police who on searching his vehicle found a treasure trove of evidence that sent him to prison.

In prison, he came to and sorted himself out with the outcome of studying law. He, however, was refused leave to practice in the UK that in the end it returned to Nigeria to establish himself and dabble in politics.

None is harmless fun

None of what these people did was harmless, they inveigled their way into confidences and trust, beguiled, suborned and deceived people, some of us gullible and even stupid, through their tricks people have lost savings and fortunes, none of these crimes are victimless.

I only have to look in my spam folder to find someone selling something or offering a cut of some phantom sums of money that have come into their possession by illicit means, they are usually soliciting help to launder the funds if they exist, but once they have reeled you into their enterprise, you will probably be sending them money instead, and by the time you know what is going on, they are gone, gone, gone, with your money, and playing the same tricks on another hapless customer.

Much as I have been a bit unsympathetic to those who have fallen to scams, I guess my early experience taught me to be wary of snake oil salesmen. There is no easy money to be made, except in a bequest or the luck of a lottery, but don’t be fooled because there are people out there who can make fools of us and when they do, sadly, a fool and his money are quite soon parted.

My blogs about scams

Blog - Avarice Anonymous

Blog - Was that the Real Story?

Blog - I Go Chop Your Dollars - 419 Song Expose

Blog - Silly Dingo hooked by Nubian money boobs

Blog - Beware of Online Romance Fraud

Blog - Nigeria: Advice to the Second Nigerian Astronaut

All metaphors of the dame

The call in the land is, let us pray,
          For we all are prey,
Caught in the way of predators of yesterday,
          Dinosaurs be they that roam our lanes today.

Present thyself, dame of infamy,
          To wit, a game of villainy,
Stashed away in the servant’s coffer,
          You reach now, the loot to recover.

Will they have known their name was rich,
          Never a day again for them to twitch,
Abused they were to conceal a crime,
          Yet to them, not a dime.

Promoted you were beyond your competence,
          Not once strung together a good sentence,
Married to him who rose without rectitude,
          Much educated beyond his aptitude.

The sheriff sued the serf for possible theft,
          Then you entered the stage from the left,
With an embarrassment of legal pandas you came,
          Black from white you all knew no shame.

The loot is mine you cried,
          As we asked what could you have tried?
No job you ever did altogether could have paid,
          What is now to be reclaimed.

Then you opened up a treasure trail,
          A bank account tells a money tale,
For how your term as first greed,
          Is not the last of help you’ll need.

Yet, you will walk away scot free,
          Not to say how the filthy lucre tree,
Watered your purse with riches real,
          For that is how we deal.

We have implicitly enshrined,
          In the law of the land most refined,
Every means to allow the perfidy,
          Of immunity for gross impunity.

Opinion: The Challenge of Rearing Nigerian Children Abroad

An embarrassment of heritage

I was rather discomfited by the news of the conviction of 8 teenagers yesterday for the killing of another teenager in 2010.

There are issues with gang warfare and disputes in London but the brazenness with which these youngsters carried out their assault on another in plain public view leaves one wondering what our society has become.

One teenager stood in the middle of the road wielding a samurai sword and they ended up chasing the victim into a busy London Underground Station where they as many as 15 in number attacked, stabbed, kicked and punched the poor 15-year old Sofyen Belamouadden to death.

That is bad enough, but when I read the names of the perpetrators involved, I feel a sense of eerie familiarity as Junior Bayode, Obi Nwokeh, Christopher Omoregie, Samsom  Odegbune, Femi Oderinwale and Victoria Osoteku all appear to have Nigerian surnames.

They have some Nigerian connection

That is not to say that these people are Nigerian, but one can safely assume they have some connection with Nigeria by reason of parentage and possibly heritage.

The other two might well have Nigerian connections but that is not evident from their names. What bothers me is what the parents and guardians of these kids might have been up to that their wards have ended up on the extreme side of the law having congregated with impunity in the mob act of killing someone else in plain view.

I appreciate that these kids might never have visited Nigeria or experienced what many might call a traditional Nigerian upbringing that gives the parent licence to brutalise their wards in what we broadly call discipline but discipline in and of itself cannot just be corporal punishment – we need to adapt the tools of affirmation and chastisement to the societies we find ourselves in.

Adapting parenting influence

Whereas in Nigeria it is probably enough to dispatch parental responsibility by just being a provider of shelter, food, education and basic welfare, the differences in societal values and expectations mean that parents have to be more involved in attending to the emotional needs of their wards and this is something many might not have found examples of in their own upbringing.

I dare say, where ethnic minorities fail to integrate congregating in conurbations of ghettoised indifference, they shirk in the fundamental responsibility of understanding the pressures their wards face and the society in which they wards are growing – religion and social events amongst ourselves are not enough, we cannot recreate our local villages abroad and hope that it will suffice – it does not.

Just because we cannot bring our kids up the “Nigerian” way does not absolve us of our responsibility in society to bring our kids to respect the rule of law, the dignity of labour and the earning of respect through purposeful activity rather than menace – gangs are fundamentally antithetical to this thinking and one can say it arises because parents are absent from what they are supposed to be doing.

Misguided parental goals

Over the last few years, I have found too many instances where kids of Nigerian heritage have been victims or perpetrators of violent crime, if we must have children in foreign societies it behoves us to exert ourselves to bring them up in environments where they are first not under threat and then not influenced by negative role models.

The preoccupation with keeping up appearances and status in our marooned Diaspora communities when the greater task of separation and integration is of essence for the sake of our children is atrocious – children are better inspired and encouraged by aspirational guardians who provide positive role models that their wards can emulate.

A parenting challenge

It is all too easy to suggest children have become wayward and are the black sheep of the family but if their formative years were spent under a responsible adult’s care and hopefully guidance, then that is probably where things also went wrong – what children end up becoming does not occur in a vacuum.

Looking at those 6 Nigerian names, should be a warning shot across the bows of ethnic parenthood in foreign lands that your involvement is pertinent, that the game plan for child rearing cannot follow the script we once had or experienced back at home and that we cannot spend all hours in the pursuit of filthy lucre if we want the peace of children who will in future go on to live successful, independent lives away from unsavoury encounters with the law and the shame that it brings.

Opinion: It's a Dress, NOT a YES

A crime beneath contempt

The focus went to India this week with protests against the gang-rape of a lady of 23 by six presumably drunken men on a bus as punishment for being out in the evening with a man.

She was repeated raped, beaten with rods and thrown off the bus, her companion was also attacked but that lady presently fights for her life.

There are many strands to this story that cannot be dealt with in the strictures of a blog; the cultural, the traditional, the economic, the social and the religious issues are myriad.

No excuse

However, there is one clear narrative that should be declared unassailable all around the globe - that there is no excuse acceptable in humanity and most especially in the 21^st Century that warrants the violation of another human-being in pursuit of some warped notion of deterrence or meting out of punishments to set society to rights.

In the first instance, drunkenness cannot  and must not excuse criminality, it is within the capabilities of people to control their use of alcoholic beverages and moderate the anti-social influences that might result from inebriation.

There is no reason for people to act in mob packs like animals, each one of those men should have and must have known that what they were doing was at first wrong and at best criminal but they might have for some sense of impunity assumed they could get away with their reprehensible acts.

Nothing corrective in rape

The strange entitlement syndrome that allows men to act as if there are society’s female policeman with the right to prejudge, accuse, charge, convict and punish our womenfolk is not only evident in what happened in India, it is pervasive all around the globe in the use of rape as a weapon of war, for the absurd correction of sexual preferences, for Neanderthal gratification without retribution and even for exacting an atrocious societal norm.

There is nothing corrective in rape and there is nothing whatsoever that can place rape in the ambit of anything legally justifiable under any circumstances, no matter how sententious you want to be.

The strange of strangers

That it could be a complete stranger’s business who a lady decides to go out with at any time of the day is bizarre on the face of it.

That the stranger will then act to not just challenge the lady but violate her as if they are acting in the office of society’s disciplinarian for moral infractions beggars belief in the extreme but we see this in too many places and society has been lethargic in rising up against these patently human rights violations.

Even in Nigeria

In the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja, the Abuja Environmental Protection Board has taken on the vile task of corralling any female found in town after a certain hour and branding them prostitutes.

A government organisation suddenly turned vice-squad and moral police that would shame even extreme religious fundamentalists with their egregious abuse of woman rights on the premise that they are keeping the city clean.

Even so

There is no doubt that we all want some standard of morals and modesty on our streets but it is not a licence to exact punitive measures outside the law and in violation of human rights because someone does not conform to our moral standards or prejudicial interpretations of religious texts to dehumanise, persecute, prosecute and censure others.

There is still a principle to abide by – Live and let live.

Remember this

In ending, I remember watching the news yesterday and two placards stood out in the Indian protests.

It’s a dress, not a Yes – This is probably the most succinct protest against rape under the excuse of supposedly indecent dressing.

Don’t teach our girls how to dress, teach our boys not to rape – I will rewrite that in a most categorical declaration – Teach our boys never to rape, whatever the circumstances.

Nigeria: Lawmakers deliberate on the completely absurd

Originally written for NigeriansTalk.org as Lawmakers deliberate on the completely absurd.

No respect for the lawmaker

Sometimes I wonder why deliberations between lawmakers never get accorded any recognition of sophistication, erudition or plain sense.

It somehow never even gets to the level of a marketplace brawl in the heat of the day, the brutish entertainment of professional wrestling seems to have more decorum and order in its proceedings and eventual result – it is no wonder people might better watch a wrestling match than politicians politicking and preening themselves in self-absorbed discourse under the pretense of being representatives of some constituency.

That is the worrisome aspect of this line of thought, the fact that lawmakers are not seen in any good light and they then have the power to enact laws and legislation that affects our lives and livelihoods, it goes without saying that we need a better class of person first then better levels of deliberation.

A topic ready for debate

I have been reading comments to a news story in the good fatherland of Nigeria where lawmakers have deliberated the absurd, it is incredible that we end up with such representatives; these people do seriously believe they have raised serious concerns and their deliberations rather than being ridiculous are legitimate discourse.

The nEXt online newspaper carried and article with the headline Lawmakers ask robbers to declare temporary ceasefire [1], a headline like that should garner enough curiosity and interest, it did mine.

Nigeria is currently hosting the Under-17 Football World Cup, a competition that was almost pulled last year because the government could not see its obligation to follow through a commitment to host, the self-same government that is seeking a permanent seat on the UN Security Council – such is the myopia that plagues our leadership.

Appealing to the patriotism of bandits

Ogun State has one of the venues, so the lawmakers met up and first lamented that a particular location – Isheri Bridge on the border of Lagos and Ogun States had become a den of bandits.

Anyone would think once a hotspot for crime has been identified, you empower, equip and instruct the law enforcement agencies to sort it out and have a report at some future date as to how it was done and what else they need to be more effective at crime-fighting.

These politicians had a different line of thinking that could only be expressed verbatim, “there is a need for the men of the underworld to suspend their operations in the interim, because of the on-going mundial.”

Yes, our lawmakers were asking armed robbers to have a ceasefire, they should suspend their criminal activities to bolster and participate in the window dressing rebranding of Nigeria as a peaceful, crimeless and safe country.

Indeed, it is good to appeal to everyone’s sense of patriotism at a time like this, but this takes the absurd to another level crass stupidity, you cannot imagine anything worse can come after that appeal.

At the mercy of criminals

Well, it got worse, because the lawmaker went on to say, “Then they can resume thereafter, because there is nowhere in the world where robbers and robberies could be stopped from their work.”

One comment read, if this were a drama sketch, it would be unbelievable, the lines would be struck out, but this really happened, those words were spoken by an elected representative that had willfully suspended every iota of intellect.

In one sentence, they threw in the towel to crime, left us at the mercy of criminals and in that defeatist thinking equated robbery to some sort of gainful pursuit or employment.

Robbers and robberies do get stopped and many do end up being nabbed by the long arm of the law if law enforcement is given the tools, responsibility and confidence to do their job. However, this lawmaker and the chamber in which his remarks received shameless hearing and debate have undermined ever establishment and institution that might at one time have been able to combat this menace with all vigour and win.

So feeble, so delusional

To rub salt in insult into injury, he concluded his plea for support with, “If foreigners witness the robbers' attacks at this point, it would send a bad signal to other nations.” In my view, nothing could be worse than having this debate where the lawmakers have put us at the mercy and goodwill of men of the underworld and given the police no particular impetus to make order, safety and security prevail.

Then the Speaker of the House feebly suggested, “I want to use the opportunity to call on the police to intensify efforts in checkmating criminals. They should please not relent in the efforts.” How the police are expected to win the war on crime where the chess analogy leaves them so powerless as pawns and the armed robbers are all elevated to queens escapes me.

Much more hot air of words but no backbone or force of parliament to arrest an untenable situation; all this constituted a debate in a house of assembly.

Scanning through the comments left, it is clear that the Nigerian populace with an opinion are less than impressed by this and attribute this to the rot that has made politics an unpalatable mix of the nastiest people holding the reigns of power but completely clueless as to what being in power represents.

It is no wonder that they cannot even get a local government official to appear before them.

The danger is that this kind of deliberation is probably not an exception, but the norm in many other state assemblies, providing for chaos, drift and misgovernment – Nigerians need to talk about this kind of representation and deliberation, it should never become commonplace.

Source

[1] 234Next.com | Lawmakers ask robbers to declare temporary ceasefire

Nigeria: Our Own Comical Ali - Ogbonna Onovo

Our Comical Ali

It is with amusement if not embarrassment that I read that Nigeria now has its own “Comical Ali” [1]. Now, Comical Ali was the minister in Saddam Hussein’s government who made wild statements about the Iraqis winning just as George W. Bush’s shock-and-awe crusade was rolling down the streets of Baghdad.

The Nigerian cast in this position happens to be the new Nigerian police chief, the Inspector General of Police Mr. Ogbonna Onovo.

Grieving through respects

Just over a week ago saw the passing of a legendary human rights activist and legal luminary, Gani Fawehinmi; despite his faults, his work in challenging government excess and the untrammelled egregious abuse of power.

It behoves many in Nigeria to be seen to pay respects to such an one, in fact, it would have been a conveyor belt of personalities literally leaving the surviving relatives no time to reflect, grieve or think as they have to entertain and engage in pointless photo opportunities in the quest to presumably do the right thing.

One of such visitors who visited to pay respects and condole the family was the put upon, harassed and vilified but courageous ex-chairman of the ant-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

In full public glare

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has been engaged in a number of law suits with the establishment but is a research fellow at a university in the United Kingdom. There is no doubt that the establishment in Nigeria would like to lay their hands on him, rough him up and shut him up because he is privy to information that makes those in power extremely uncomfortable.

In full public glare with the press carrying the stories and many photographs to prove it, Mallam Ribadu paid his respects to the family of Gani Fawehinmi in the company of his lawyer after which he left Nigeria to return to his activities abroad.

The comical clowning that stems from this is that when asked the Inspector General of Police (IGP) categorically denied [2] that Mallam Ribadu was ever in Nigeria and that he would not believe he was in Nigeria until he saw evidence to that fact.

An embarrassment indeed

This brings a number of issues to the fore, in some ways Mallam Ribadu is a thorn in the flesh of the establishment, they would stop at nothing to inconvenience him ever so slightly till they are sanctioned by judicial process.

Mallam Ribadu is too recognisable a figure to have slipped in and out of Nigeria without being noticed through any and all of the border entry points of Nigeria; for the publicity that accompanied his visit, he did not sneak in, he boldly went about his business without let or hindrance.

For such an important figure to have visited Nigeria to attend a very high profile event and the IGP be completely oblivious of that fact leaves much to be desired.

The rashness of the IGP leaves one suspect of his capabilities; the intelligence infrastructure in Nigeria must be in need of a radical overhaul; the man should allow himself to be briefed of developments in the country; he should ensure he has all the facts before he answers politically charged questions than attempt an absurd face-saving denial which is in many ways dishonest.

The whole matter is laughable, embarrassing and indicative of rank incompetence with a lack of attention to the meticulous research of facts and events, one would expect the police chief to be better briefed and reasoned in his responses – but then, rather than be annoyed, the better excuse for this debacle is to see the rise of Nigeria’s own Comical Ali.

Sources

[1] The Best Of 'Comical Ali' | Home | Sky News

[2] Ribadu’s visit: Balarabe Musa, Keyamo, CD boss rap IGP | Nigerian Tribune