Editorial: They got away with murder and menace

Free from grief

As Casey Anthony gains her freedom from prison after being acquitted of all charges related to the death of her daughter, we must collectively wonder about what has become of our world and sense of justice.

Cayley Anthony, the 2-year old daughter whose death remains a mystery apart from the fact that it was a homicide and the circumstances around her death looking unproven but with all circumstantial evidence and attitudes pointing to a most culpable mother has apparently died in vain no one to answer for whatever happened to her.

Going over the gruesome detail will not serve to benefit anyone but we all run the risk of the influence of detective and forensic dramas we watch on television where we almost believe that every commission of crime will be fully documented with witness, video-tape and Colombo, Monk, Perry Mason & Miss Marple on the case piecing together all the clues to present the perfect solution.

Reason may not be reasonable

The greater opprobrium has been heaped on the jury from which we have heard certain say that the evidence was not conclusive enough to prove that she murdered the child and on examination of that thinking it appears they had confused the reason to doubt with reasonable doubt.

As one lawyer argued, one might have a reason but a reason might not necessarily be reasonable, most of the evidence presented in murder cases will in terms be circumstantial and the rest will be left to probabilities.

If for 31 days the mother of the child did not report her missing child knowing the child was dead for whatever reason either by accident or the commission of a crime as a homicide, she must be guilty of something and definitely cannot be innocent just because the total recall of essential evidence is absent for analysis.

Casey Anthony can no more be tried for the whatever lead to the death of her daughter and for those who have been cajoled into a false reality, they have become partakers with the blood of innocent Cayley Anthony on their hands too – the cause for justice has been served, as the mother gets to live her life free of the encumbrance of a child she never grieved, if there is a conscience in America, God help us all.

A useful minister

Reading this piece of news has left me utterly crestfallen about Nigeria and the hopes of good governance in the hands of Goodluck Jonathan – it is redeemable if he has the cajones to face up to this situation and address it forthwith.

The newly sworn-in Minister of Transport was the erstwhile minister of the same department before the elections and so he got reinstated to his post.

During his first tenure, he audited the activities of departments in his ministry that included the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the then head of that department was found to have been involved in fraudulent activities and was removed from his post and charged.

His replacement apparently has close links with militants that have now been subsumed into civil society through the amnesty program but it appears they still retain elements of thuggery, brigandage and menace that they need to project to get their way.

Lost to brigands

The minister reinstated to his post obviously has the track record of rooting out corruption and will in the same vein trammel the activity of thugs who have commandeered the revenues of NIMASA for their ends with impunity.

With the minister intimidated and the militants seemingly having access to the unelected and unaccountable influence of the First Lady, the minister has been redeployed to a ministry outside his core competence whilst NIMASA appears to have been given as part of an extended amnesty package for the ex-millitants but unreconstructed criminals to run riot, that is very sad.

Remedy this situation, immediately

Nigeria deserves better and the idea that criminality, militancy, brigandage and piracy can be rewarded and the government be held to hostage as these atrocious beings run amok awash with cash that should go in the coffers of the Treasury is just to appalling to contemplate.

That fact that they can first intimidate and then wield such influence in the corridors of power can make one almost cry Nigeria has been thrown to the dogs. This situation needs immediate remedy, call their bluff and lock them up if they flout the terms of their amnesty – this is an untenable situation, it must not last another day, at best.

Acknowledgements

The BBC News website reports that Casey Anthony freed after toddler murder acquittal and the 234Next News website reports that Minister loses post in clash with former militant, a cause for serious concern.

Nigeria: The president should keep his counsel

At Nero’s fiddle concerto

I find myself writing today not to praise President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan but to contemn certain of his views because at this point he stands accused of a naïveté that is unbecoming of a leader, talk less of a country like Nigeria.

As we all prepared for the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Nigerian Independence all the eyes of global news outlets were focused on the most populous country in Africa.

This offered a time for the elite of Nigeria to congregate in Abuja with invited “Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen” the continual phrase that prefixed every sentence of the Masters of Ceremonies on the 1^st of October.

On the Internet, I found a live stream of the event and could not help but notice amongst the guests people who have no example to give like the First Hair of Cameroon Chantal Biya, Former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and King Mswati III of Swaziland who might have visited with any number of wives to keep his manhood fully occupied.

Fireworks of disruption

During the ceremony two car bombs went off hardly a kilometre from the festivities to which the militant and nominally terrorist brigandage called the Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) assumed responsibility having first warned important news outlets and then later apologised for the unfortunate loss of life.

Apparently, the government had been forewarned of this impending terrorist attack and the home of the heretofore mistaken leader of MEND, Henry Okah had been raided in South Africa the day before on Thursday.

In my view, the fully mobilised terrorist plan in Nigeria could not have been stopped within 24 hours from whatever would have been discovered in South Africa, the authorities were well behind the curve on this.

MEND in the frame

In essence, as the government began their investigations, their spotlight should have been beamed on MEND and its leadership with the view to capturing all the miscreants and bringing them to swift justice.

To any thinking person, MEND had purpose, opportunity, motive and means to perpetrate that attack even though it was the first time that an IRA-style car bomb had been deployed in a terrorist attack on Nigerian soil and also now, the fight had moved from the Niger Delta to the federal capital in Abuja.

Making amends for MEND

However, at an ECOWAS meeting of states celebrating their 50^th Independence anniversaries in 2010, the President made these statements [1].

“What happened yesterday was a terrorist act and MEND was just used as a straw; MEND is not a terrorist group. The Niger Delta people are aware of the government's noble efforts to assuage the suffering and deprivation in that region.”

“I am from the Niger Delta, my father's house is few metres from an oil-well, so nobody can claim to be a Niger Deltan than myself.”

He went on to say, “It is erroneous to think that my people who have been agitating for good living will deliberately blow up the opportunity they have now, I pray for the souls of those who died to attain peace and fervently pray for those who sustain injuries in the blast to be healed.”

He’s lost the plot

The Twitterverse and Facebook literally went into meltdown after this speech and not one of the comments and views I read were charitable.

I have always given President Jonathan the benefit of the doubt and suggested many a time that his PhD in zoology gives him an interesting insight into the behaviour of animals, organisms, primates or to put a finer point on it, simians.

In this case, I suggested he go back and dust his books and swot up on this because whilst he might know the difference between apes and monkeys, this was a different kind of monkey.

The straw man burns

If I were to take apart his statements of yesterday there are some interesting points to note about what he said.

+ We can all agree that the attack was a terrorist act.

+ He saying the MEND was being used as a straw is terminologically wrong, I presume he mean straw man and was deploying the straw man argument which involves ignoring the facts and offering fallacious claims.

+ MEND with its subversive and ruinous activities in the Niger Delta is at the minimum terrorist group though it might not yet have the outlay that Al Qaeda has.

+ Indeed, he is from the Niger Delta and though his father’s house is a few meters from an oil well, his properties were attacked twice in 2007 [2] when he was selected to be the running mate of late President Yar’Adua.

+ Whilst the acronym MEND suggests the agitation for good living standards for the people of the Niger Delta it is incredulous to suggest that the activities of MEND have really been about activism for social welfare, that view is both delusionary and dishonest.

The Aftermath

To buttress the points he made, the President has now suggested that the terrorist attack was launched by some foreign-based group [3] despite the fact that no other group has come forward to claim responsibility nor apologise for the carnage but MEND itself.

Meanwhile, two suspects have been named [4] as masterminds of the bomb plot whilst the President continues to plumb the depths of incredulity with fallacies begging the question about his reasoning.

This was for the global news

For all the attention the Golden Jubilee garnered in two car bombings the focus was snatched from the jollity of the elite to a festering problem that does not seem to have a solution or game plan in sight.

It can be said that the bombing was staged on that particular day to gain maximum publicity which is why the perpetrators sent out an IRA-style warning for Eagle Square to be evacuated but the way the president is handling this matter rather might well lead to an almighty bungle.

Handling the matter

This is not to say all lines of inquiry and investigation should be not tapped to their conclusive ends but taking the focus off the obvious, the deliberate and the facts serves to give the so-called masterminds a head-start with the possibility of that trail going cold.

The greater issue for all is this new development of car bombs in Nigeria and two in succession; the idea that foreign groups can come into our federal capital on an auspicious day to wreak havoc with bombs is concern.

The President is not helping the situation with these unverified and uncorroborated theories of casting blame elsewhere despite the telling lapse in our security and the seeming poor response to handling the disaster after it happened.

Keep your counsel

The information minister failed to capture the mood of the moment dismissing the attack in favour of the supposed success of the celebrations but before the whole world the party was marred by this.

If I had President Jonathan’s ear, I would say, keep your counsel, it is not compulsory to be seen to talk and then when you talk you are viewed with expressions that range from incredulity to derision the risk for an almighty bungle looms.

If foreigners terrorise you, you have a problem, if your people are the terrorists, suspend your disbelief and handle the catastrophe before some sarcastic security analyst says they had all the data and messed it up, so typically Nigerian.

Sources

[1] Jonathan says MEND not responsible for Abuja attacks | 234Next.com

[2] Is Goodluck suffering a run of bad luck? [akin.blog-city.com]

[3] Foreign-based group behind bomb attacks – President | 234Next.com

[4] Nigeria: Police Name Suspects in Dual Car Bombings - ABC News

Nigeria: Another two oil cremations

Oil fires the people

Anyone following the saga of Nigeria, its oil and its people would read the news gleaned from recent events and conclude that whilst Nigeria is blessed with oil, any contact between its people and the product always leads to an uncontrollable conflagration.

The Nigerian newswires have been quite tardy in reporting what I believe are two incidents in Port Harcourt, one on Friday and the other on Saturday.

TheNewsNG.com reports that there was an explosion at a Port Harcourt Nigerian Ports Authority jetty whilst a vessel was discharging petroleum products in a general cargo area – several Filipino personnel died in the incident.

ThisDayOnline.com (DisDayn) reports that the name of the vessel was MV Golden Lucy and only two people were injured. The petroleum product being discharged was Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) for a Nigerian firm, Segmon Nigeria Limited.

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) carries part of this story and corroborates the view that militants might have been responsible for this mishap by detonating a remote controlled bomb attached to the vessel.

This is worrisome because a militant organisation quite averse to the presence of the Nigerian Military in the territorial remit of the MEND has promised to menace the region with attacks on industrial infrastructure and poison the food and water supplies of the armed forces.

The report from DisDayn suggests the armed forces have been infiltrated by informants and sympathizers of the militant organisation who are providing information to thwart every move to flush out these “terrorists” and hopefully bring a modicum of peace to the region.

Oil tanker overturned in chase

I did not learn of this incident initially, I was trying to find additional sources to the news from the BBC that a tanker had exploded in Port Harcourt on Saturday on a busy road.

The Nigerian references I had, covered only the event of Friday, it was the IHT that made the stories two separate events just when I was about to question if both events were one and the same reported from different perspectives.

So, on Saturday, the police gave chase to a stolen oil tanker through the busy roads close to Port Harcourt, obviously, in the desperate attempt to avoid apprehension by the law, the driver took a manoeuvre that burst a tyre as he turned – this overturned the lorry and spilt petrol on surrounding vehicles as it exploded taking life and property in its wake.

Police car chases

Now, we are well aware that police car chases are not risk-averse but the determination (on the part of the police) over desperation (on the part of the suspect), the public being put at great danger in trying to keep the law.

Smart policing would be to try and determine where the car being chased is going and apprehend it with tyre-bursting stingers further along its course so that the driver is forced to stop.

It takes away most of the pressure of desperation to escape and hopefully the recklessness, whilst the determination to capture the culprit is better thought through.

Charting the course of the culprit however would require scrambling a helicopter to observe the vehicle from above; unfortunately, there were no helicopters to fight the inferno of the day before, also in Port Harcourt – so that puts paid to that idea.

To stop a stolen tanker

But this was a tanker and it is unlikely that it could have disappeared completely from the tracking activities of the police; they could have phoned ahead on a number of possible routes of the tanker and had other police personnel try to intercept the tanker on one of those exit points along the route.

I am not sure of how the police would have been able to chase down the tanker and stop it without a proper boulder road-block, something that would have required some thinking, initiative, intelligence and proper planning – something I cannot ascribe to the police and not in Nigeria.

Public-safety conscious crime-fighting

Much as criminals must be caught, it should not be by putting the public at unmitigated risk – a greater loss has now been incurred beyond a stolen tanker of fuel, these have included lives, cars, stops and livelihoods, all because both the culprit and the police were not thinking.

It was reckless and criminal on both parts, one expects the superintendent of that section or even the region to be reprimanded and if the police survived that episode, they must suffer criminal sanction.

Once again, one has to express condolences to the survivors of hapless victims of Nigeria’s oil wealth and rotten police.

A very sorry affair indeed.

CNN Exclusive: The creaks (sic) of Niger Delta

Fleshing a barebones news story

Sometimes correspondents do get a bit above their game in the quest for a story, that they plot and playback for our viewing rather than just report the news as is.

When Channel 4 in the UK used to broadcast Drop the Dead Donkey, many viewers would have thought no respectable journalist would file a war-zone report with a reality scene that would turn out to be the local community centre’s unkempt football pitch – if only our skepticism had caught up with our disbelief of make-belief, we might be smarter about the stuff we get fed to us as news, today.

Sometimes, the news might only be in the first 10 words of 15 minute broadcast and the only facts you will have are time and place, the event is dumped in the hands of armchair analysts with expertise in everything under that sun, so what we is get is opinions and suggestions presented as fact and event; by the time the penny drops, the event has been overtaken by other audience grabbing entertainment.

I have the feeling that some news editors now believe we are not interested in the news anymore, they believe we just want to be titillated with tidbits and have our voyeuristic tendencies exploited to the point of needing radical therapy.

It is definitely a given that one cannot just rely on just one news source, in hemispheric terms, one needs all perspectives and just because Western media can put people on the ground with sophisticated equipment to record an unfolding drama does not mean we have the truth.

Prismatic views of the Niger Delta

This is in the light of a report on CNN filed by Jeff Koinange an African-based correspondent under Big Guns, Big Oil Collide in Nigeria, there is no doubt we need multiple perspectives of issue to do with the Niger Delta, its people, its environment and the effects oil exploration on that diverse community.

There are many propagandists with vested interests in the matter, that getting to the truth is very much like sinking another hole prospecting for oil with greater uncertainty for success.

The people obviously are the most affected and nothing depicts that situation better than my February 2007 print edition of the National Geographic Magazine with the title Curse of the Black Gold - Please visit the online Photo Gallery.

A typical Niger Delta Settlement - © National Geographic Online

The oil companies as they rake in profits have to massage the public view of their corporate responsibility by all sorts of green initiatives and platitudes but the pictures persist and the news does not budge.

The Nigerian Government is an apology of governance, social justice and leadership, much can have been done to address the plight of the people of the Niger Delta but whilst we gain debt relief the largest oil-producing nation in Africa is ashamedly remiss and culpable in the rape of our resources and the livelihoods and well-being of the people.

The militants who because of the injustices of first, the impunity of the second and dereliction of duty and responsibility of the third have become a global phenomena, with attacks on oil infrastructure, the kidnapping of personnel and other destabilizing activities that can raise the price of oil, have the international markets in jitters, make insurance premiums for life and property approach that of contractors in Iraq, and basically give the government and companies a bad name and bad press whilst not achieving much.

The CNN Exclusive

So, we are all generally aware of what supposedly goes on in the Niger Delta, however, to bring this reality to the viewers of CNN, it would be difficult to happen upon the secretive activities of the militants if a deadline is to be met to deliver that news piece as part of pre-planned topics of interest for February.

It would appear Jeff Koinange with the generally accepted knowledge we have, wrote a screenplay and sought his dramatis personae first from main militant group called with the acronym MEND and when they could not make his scheduling, he engaged a number of brigands to enact typical MEND activities and relayed that to us as an exclusive.

Publish and be challenged

What is interesting is the strident ferocity of MEND’s rebuttal of that exclusive, the people featured do not belong to the MEND organisation and have no affiliation to them beyond which MEND has threatened to reveal all email correspondence between themselves and Jeff Koinange – now that would be an exclusive, which might be resolved with hush money.

The Nigerian Government, taking a cue from that rebuttal has called the report subversive and demanded an apology. Errr! Wait a minute before apologies start to fly.

The annoyingly photogenic Minister of Information and Communications (read propaganda) in the person of Mr. Frank Nweke Jr. remonstrated with a statement, an excerpt of which appears below.

“The report which, also featured some Filipino workers purportedly being held by members of MEND, has been run several times in the past 24 hours by the CNN, to wrongfully denigrate Nigeria and her peoples, send the wrong signals to the international community about the state of affairs in the country, create unnecessary panic, foster the feeling of insecurity, advance an out-dated thesis of neglect of the Niger Delta and portray Nigeria as a country in perpetual crises”.

Yes, up to the point where it appears the good name of great Nigeria is being besmirched, the minister is generally right, however, this - advance an out-dated thesis of neglect of the Niger Delta – I do wish it was out-dated and a thesis of somebody’s imagination, the inability for the government to address this in fairness leads to portraying - Nigeria as a country in perpetual crises – are we talking of the Niger Delta, the Presidential tiff with his vice-President, the efficacy of the EFCC, the political, health, social, security, economic or infrastructure situation of Nigeria here? Almost like Admiral Lord Nelson's oft misquoted "I see no ships" , Mr. Nweke Jr. sees no crises, so there are none.

News today

Sadly Mr. Koinange allegedly took a seriously newsworthy situation, dramatized it and presented it as reality; and I say, without prejudice, that, can be viewed as seriously unhelpful to the cause of the people and blatantly dishonest.

Mr. Nweke, not forgetting the Junior postscript, probably and really does have a grievance which should be aired, we should not have dramas that allow crimes to take place like the abduction of the Filipinos in that exclusive and then relay that as contemporaneous, but he is disingenuous to assert that those pictures in the National Geographic are an outdated thesis of neglect – that is a breathtakingly brazen barefaced terminological inexactitude and being seriously economical with the actualité.

The CNN Report - Thanks to Lady1

References

The Niger Delta

Nigeria and Oil

A Whole range of views on the Niger Delta Crises

Oil Companies Complicit in Nigerian Abuses - Human Rights Watch 1999

Nigeria: Corruption and Misuse Rob Nigerians of Rights - Human Rights Watch 2007