Still getting used to life in the Netherlands

Stone cold hand-washing

In all the years I have lived in the Netherlands, there are a number of things I will not get used to, things that I cannot adapt to no matter how I try.

Except in building with a very international staff the toilet do not have hot water taps, something one can endure in the spring and summer, but as we approach the days in which we see amid the winter’s snow my hands suffer.

Turn on the taps and see the hands go blue and congeal as if I have dipped them into a bottle of liquid nitrogen, I would not get used to this at all.

Tarts, tomatoes & turpentine

On Thursday night, as I returned from work, I just did not feel like entering the kitchen for a cooked meal. The fastest knock-up meal I could make is smoked salmon on toast after which pasta comes next.

The convenience of having a supermarket on the ground floor of my apartment block cannot be over-stated.

Albert Heijn is the king of supermarkets in the Netherlands, but it would not hold a torch to a third-rate supermarket in the UK.

It has considerably improved though because when I first arrived in the Netherlands, the shelves were staked in alphabetical order, I thought they had tablets, tarts, toilet paper, tomatoes and turpentine side-by-side.

Rumour has it that they brought in an expert from Marks and Spencer to take the concept from corner-shop to supermarket – however, I think they have relapsed into their old ways.

Dated cultures

I approached the salmon shelf and for all sorts of reasons I am date sensitive, too many times I have been in the supermarket and found out-of-date items even though in the evening you run the gauntlet of ill-disciplined, unprofessional and rowdy kids working part-time as shelf-stuffers.

The first was dated the 30^th of November, then the next was the 1^st of December and the next, and the next – 8 of them in all as it became apparent that it was the evening of the 4^th of December.

In the UK, a shop would not survive the evening if a foods inspector finds such stuff on the shelves, but meats and cakes have been found to be out of date too many times, I expect to see stuff like that every other visit.

The staff at this shop are so nonchalant and I really doubt there is any concern about dates on items, in fact, I think I should take pictures next time and forward the stuff to the Consumer’s Association.

I had some other salmon, but if attention to food safety is so lax, I do wonder about culpability if things really go seriously bad.

I have no choice but to continue shopping downstairs, I would ask to speak to the manager next time or cause a bit of a rumpus to embarrass them into really paying more attention to a critical public safety issue.

A building shorn of power

Talk about public safety, as I was working on Friday, my computer died at the same time as the lights, I sauntered out of my office and found the lights had gone out in all the offices in the three-winged complex of 10-storeys.

Only the emergency lighting was on, the lifts were out and the toilets were dark – someone had dug up the cable in the street below.

In my view, even though there was no fire, the building was incapacitated and should have been evacuated regardless of the fact that there was no immediate emergency.

Everyone would have had to use the emergency exits if one arose, but for at least another hour before I left having informed the absent project support office and managers of the situation, the building was still occupied to capacity.

I walked down 9 flights of stairs and returned to work from home but I really felt in a building that also contained three floors of the main power company, someone should have been more responsive, responsible and taken responsibility – well, maybe the building would be there when I return on Tuesday.

Nigeria: Torture defended as standard police procedure

The rickety stool of the hamlet

With the way every nonentity incapable of achieving peer-reviewed and internationally recognised titles borne of the dint of cranial-matter exertion, I was not too worried about the title of heir apparent.

The number of frogs that are princes and ugly ducklings that are princesses in Nigeria has cheapened the idea of being titled that plain formal address as Mr, Ms, Mrs or academic titles seem to be more respectable without the baggage of being tagged a crook.

The issue here was that an heir apparent to the rickety stool at a hamlet in a backwater of Yorubaland had come to nought in police custody [1] having gone there to report a robbery. Mercifully given to hyperbole, the copywriter assumed every community title had a throne.

Suspicious of reporting a crime

The search for justice in Nigeria is a difficult one; in fact, the search for a police force that acts anything like a civilised and professional service in Nigeria is fraught with danger where any contact with the police could lead to the loss of life.

The man, mechanic having notice that his workshop had been burgled called on a scion of the mechanics community and with him went to report the burglary to the police. He had this witness to forestall a situation where the police would have acted funny, but it made no difference.

Unbeknownst to him, his boss had already reported the matter to the police, strangely the police did not go out to investigate or gather clues as to the matter, it just went into file.

As the man reported the burglary, the other report came out of the file and though one cannot say what the boss had reported, the man was arrested.

Of guilt and innocence by sides

The shocking revelation but everyday reality with the Nigerian Police is that the plaintiff or accuser is always considered innocent and the defendant is automatically considered guilty with the full force of unlawful restraint visited on the person without interrogation.

In fact, for plaintiff, read first mover, richer person, influential community leader or an influence peddler – a plaintiff is not so much a complainant seeking redress, rather it is someone seeking to oppress with menace in such a way that the person on the receiving end is taught a lesson regardless of the person’s innocence or guilt.

Committed suicide by himself

Somehow, this man in police custody for 48 hours suddenly died – or as Divisional Police Officer Ben Osuji averred, Dauda Najeem had committed suicide by himself in the cell.

I am a bit confused by that construction, if he did commit suicide, it by implication means he did it himself, but when by himself is added for emphasis, I suspect the suicide might also have been assisted – when this happens in police custody, it is an extra-judicial killing, a murder by the authorities and someone needs to get to the bottom of the case.

Somehow, if Mr. Najeem had committed suicide by hanging, even the police should have a Polaroid camera to record the scene of the hanging as the first course of action on discovery of the man.

The impunity of glaring police negligence

So many things are amiss in this situation, the police were supposed to conduct hourly checks on the cells and in fact monitor those who might be susceptible to self-harm. Somehow, Mr. Najeem could not have been suicidal; he was overjoyed at the arrival of his new son, his close-knit family seem to be quite integral to his life and as the only son was the heir-apparent.

The police were not as forthcoming as they should be in circumstance of serious public interest and concern as the head of the state Criminal Investigation Department offered as much information as to say that only the Commissioner of Police could ask him questions about the case.

It leaves one wondering if there is any accountability of law enforcement in a democracy in the first instance and if law enforcement really realises that their existence depends on confidence that the public has in their ability to enforce law and order as well as serve as the first port of call for complain and conflict resolution.

Humiliation, not a justice function

There is no indication as to how the man hanged himself apart from the reference that the man was in his trousers, hopefully that is always the case, there is no reason to completely denigrate and humiliate a man because he is a suspect.

Even so, if the man is charged and arraigned before a court where due process is followed; the sentence meted out should be punishment fit for the crime, if it causes humiliation it should be a matter of how the punished has reacted to the punishment, it is not the function of the courts to create the moral context for humiliating redress.

TORTURE!

However, it would appear we are closer to the truth about the cause of death when a word creeps into the story – TORTURE. Apparently, torture is the main means of extracting information from suspects in the Nigerian Police Force – this really makes you sick.

I can only quote verbatim the opinion of a top police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Torture would continue to be a weapon for extracting information from suspects as long as modern high technology investigative gadgets were not provided to the police.”

He goes on to say, “We have no tools. In as much as we are not sorcerers, there is no way we could unravel many cases without the use of torture. Look at the type of gadgets used by European and American detectives. The efficiency of their police dissuades criminally-minded people from committing crime because they know they will be caught. And when suspects are caught, they quickly own up because they know that the police will get to the root of the crime.”

Flawed criminal investigation ideas

Where do I begin to break down this flawed philosophy of criminal investigation?

I do wonder if the modern high technology investigative gadgets alluded to are basic detective work with the use of common sense and deduction, fundamental forensics or thumbscrews.

Maybe lie detectors could be useful but you need good questions to arrive at some useful answers but they cannot be the basis of case argued beyond reasonable doubt.

I would agree that the police are not sorcerers, clairvoyants or seers, but if the replacement for detective and investigative work is condensed to torture as a means of solving cases, nothing could be as uncivilised and barbaric as to have that as a fundamental criminal investigation procedure.

A fallacy and a fantasy

The assertion that the efficiency of the police dissuades criminally-minded people is a fallacy if I ever heard one – but this is typically Nigerian where supposedly knowledgeable people make unsupportable statements about some view abroad and use that as a basis of unchallengeable authority.

Since people do not bother to check the facts or ascertain the veracity of such outlandish statements those views are taken as gospel truth and they become part of the accepted body of Nigerian knowledge.

When suspects are caught, they quickly own up? Not in the Europe I live in and not in the America that I have read about – it makes you wonder what constitutes the curriculum of our police forces and where these myths of policing and crime resolution come from.

I would contend these people need no tools or gadgets, if you cannot use basic commonsense and deduction to research a situation you definitely cannot move on to the sophistication of some tools which presumably are supposed to extract the truth without causing pain.

Torture cannot elicit the truth in truth

What baffles me more is the notion that torture, the inflicting of pain can elicit the truth about a situation. Supposedly the police have not cottoned on the idea that a person might just admit to anything in the natural tendency for self-preservation.

This obviously does not take into account the possibility that the administration of torture can be quite suggestive by compelling the person to affirm what the police wants to be affirms to clear up their case work though not necessarily solve the crime.

The lack of finesse in such heinous activities which seem to have no limits lead the victim suspects to a point of expiration that is beyond medical help, the perpetrators then attempt to walk away from their crimes with the claim that the suspect committed suicide.

Record the torture as evidence

In fact, if torture should really be a tool for crime resolution, the whole truth extraction process should be available to the crime and punishment system. Complete audio and video recordings must be made available to the defence and the jury, the police who use torture cannot be allowed to present their cases as objective if the means by which they have obtained evidence is so subjective.

Subjective evidence acquisition should suffer wider scrutiny for others to judge not the case in as much as the animals that are paid to police but resort to such abhorrent methods.

No evidence obtained under torture should be admissible in any court anywhere in the world and definitely not in a democracy. We might well take riffraff off the streets and inculcate them in the police if there is no art, science, methodology and reviewable counsel to the work of criminal investigation.

I have no confidence

Unfortunately, I have no confidence in the police hierarchy to pursue to satisfactory conclusion the need to assure the right to life and the preservation of human rights such that civil means are employed to gather evidence.

Neither am I confident that this would be the last death in police custody attributed to suicide when it is almost definitely a torture-induced murder and that impunity would continue as the police lives up to its despicable malevolent moniker of ‘Torture Chambers’.

May Dauda Najeem rest in peace and if there is any justice in this world, those responsible for his death through commission, omission or negligence must be brought to book and made to pay a very heavy price.

Source

[1] The Punch: Controversy trails heir apparent’s death in detention

The Nero of Siam

Grounded by the mob of Siam

The rule of the mob has brought Siam down to a standstill because a minority of the privileged could not bear to countenance the idea of the poor majority voting for their government in elections that were supervised by the military.

Now one cannot say that the reincarnations of the recently disbanded ruling party engineered their victories with activities that were above board, but they seemed to be the ones that exploited the populist notion of addressing matters that affect the poor.

The poor of Siam have been sensitised to their democratic privileges and it is unlikely that any party would win elections without engaging the poor and the party that wins would almost always have some sort of link to the parties that the opposition have challenged.

Celebrating amidst turmoil

Meanwhile, the highly revered Nero of Siam who has tacitly allowed the military to overrun democratic choices in a coup 2 years ago and in whose name the anti-government protesters constituted into a mob to destabilise the country and who's justices have abrogated a democratic mandate played the fiddle of attending ceremonies in commemoration of his birthday with his country teetering on the brink of collapse.

This kind of self-preservation of aristocratic privilege in the hope that the institution would endure because of seeming aloofness, reverence, respect as well as the archaic lèse majesté laws, can only serve to create the means by which that institution would collapse and self-destruct.

Lessons of history

The absolute monarchies of Germany, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empires did not see through the first two decades of the 20^th Century because they did not adapt to support the voice of their masses – I am no prophet, but humanity just seems to have a way of failing to learn the lessons of history and tends to allow history to repeat itself.

It is unlikely that there would be a Yekaterinburg¹ in Siam, but one did live out his life in Huis Doorn².

Nothing can happen between the king and I, but like Nero fiddled when Rome burned, what is left to say is etcetera, etcetera and etcetera.

Footnotes

¹ Where the House of Romanov was murdered by the Communists

² Where Kaiser Wilhelm II the last monarch of Prussia spent his last days in exile in the Netherlands

Nigeria: Gone is the Jos I knew

Memories long gone

One of the dangers of sweet memories is to allow them to dictate your view of contemporary events. However, it is a lesson in life to appreciate fully and embrace the good memories on which to build expectations of the future whilst leaving behind those memories that shackle you to experiences you would rather not relive.

In fact, Demi Moore expresses [1] that sentiment better by saying, “The key is to hold onto the love you had and what you gained and don't get attached to what you lost.”

A time of adventure

The news of riots [2] in the city of Jos, Nigeria fills me with regrets of paradise lost, some of my formative and excitingly adventurous years were lived in the suburb of Rayfield, Jos.

This was a place where I could read a Famous Five [3] or Secret Seven [4] adventure and think this is possible in my backyard, then go out to have fun on my bicycle with friends.

I cannot understand what has become of Jos such that in the past decade there has been these religious riots pitting Muslims against Christians [5].

Jos was idyllic, temperate, it had in the 1970s a good proportion of Caucasians and it was probably the most anglicised city in Nigeria.

The then head of state, General Yakubu Gowon was from that area and I remember the many times he visited his hometown that we went out to the railway crossing at Bukuru waving Nigerian flags as he passed by.

The divisions emerge

Indeed, I could not have known that much about rivalries between the tribes, but there were songs that depicted some of the animosity between them, the Birom, the Angas, the Jukun and the Tiv as inhabitants of the then Benue-Plateau State.

There were the Hausa and the Fulani but they represented the union language of the region just as Muslims and Christians seemed to co-exist without malice, rancour or schism.

One can only lament the way that political forces that have no consideration and concern for their followers have exploited subtle differences between the people to foment savagery in rioting, unnecessary mob violence and killing.

The power brokers whose selfish interests are to fill their pockets and those of their sycophantic minions have been unconscionable to the extreme; as far as they are concerned, hell can reign in Jos if they cannot hold the reins of power, lives are dispensable as collateral damage to meet their needs but none of them would be found culpable for the heinous crimes that have been committed.

No concept of being Nigerian

One is also saddened that after 48 years of independence and after 94 years of the existence of the entity called Nigeria, the concept of Nigerian-ness has not taken root in the psyche of the people.

Tribal and religious affiliations still matter to many and they become the fodder for barbarian plunder, such that the riots brought on by one political party not winning a local election has been reduced to religious fighting between Christians and Muslims.

It begs the question why Nigerians cannot break free from primitive identities of tribal and religious affiliation to that which is borne out by progressive ideas, vigorous discourse, healthy debate and civilised engagement.

Is there a broad-based coalition?

The impression was that a Christian party had won in what was a predominantly Muslim area – the concept of a Christian or Muslim party must be abhorrent enough, but could there have been a case where the supposedly predominantly Muslim area did think that the other candidate was better?

This question would seem to elevate the standard of Nigerian politics to a level never attained before, but the possibility is there.

For self-appointed leaders of ill-repute to portend that they know the wishes of the voters long before they have cast their ballots would be to make the idea of democratic determination a moot point and completely irrelevant; this needs to change.

Seeking redress with civility

Ideally, there should be ways and means of challenging results of an election in a civil manner and processes put in place to verify to the satisfaction of all concerned if the tally of votes represents the clear wishes of the people.

That level of civility is unfortunately not in the capabilities of our political leaders and the ability to trust the results of our electoral processes has never really been in the gift and abilities of our electoral officials.

The opportunity to seek appropriate redress is ditched in favour of appealing to our basest instincts, excite the latent savage and feed the dormant beast, let the usually restrained animal lose on the innocent and defenceless and carnage reigns without bringing us anywhere near a solution.

The ungodly pretending to be religious

Hundreds of people killed in country where if God were to have a nap He would not find a nanosecond to blink for the number of times He is presumably called upon is amazing – people had replaced their prayer beads, rosaries, bibles and Korans with machetes and impliments that inflict grievous bodily harm and death.

The shocking thing is some leader would find ayah or verse to justify these actions in the name of God and all that is good.

I submit that the perpetrators are hardly Godly people by any stretch of the imagination, they believe they call on a deity and are in the service of some higher being but this is no religion, it is a just a horde of animals seeking a label of sorts and the greater shame it is of Nigerians to be portrayed in such bad light.

As for the childhood memories I have of Jos, they have become memories only - almost never to be the reality for kids in Jos today or in the near future – it is a sorry and sordid state of affairs, unfortunately.

Source

[1] Demi Moore at UK premiere of Flawless – Telegraph

[2] Nigerian city counts its dead after days of Christian-Muslim riots | World news | The Guardian

[3] The Famous Five (series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] The Secret Seven - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] BBC NEWS | Africa | Nigerian city tense after riots

December the first - for those who live with it

A story to tell

He was sent home to spend the last of his days from France. One cannot remember what he was imprisoned for, but when they found out he had it he was offered compassionate leave.

As time seemed to run out, he dedicated himself to writing about his life, his loves and what would have been – as a computer buff, one could see that his job was made the more complicated by an unintuitive word processor called Microsoft Word 1.0.

He did tell his tale, just before he slipped into the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

An opera beyond a soap opera

The most jovial and effervescent man he was, the quintessential opera queen, he had well over 5,000 classical and operatic albums and had written an encyclopaedia of opera.

He had enough insight to suggest that Maria Callas was not so much of what people made her out to be.

When we gathered for his 38^th, one was oblivious of the fact that we were not to celebrate another because one opened the pages of the Evening Standard to read of an interview he had given just a week before he slipped in the memory of those who once knew him – today brings that back to mind.

No eclipse darkened the day

In the week that Europe saw the total eclipse, was there a chance that love might blossom or not? Infatuation enveloped the minds of the two who thought there was a future but neither was aware of how long it might be.

Documentaries of one who suffered like it was the last night and that happened 4 times over many years – 22 years on, it looked like a sentence then but the no-hopers of yesteryears are living prosperously today – they have not slipped into memory, rather their fellowship is renewed in friendship and assurance that a future always exists for those who seek to live and love life.

The news of hope

And so the news came as years now add up to 6 and much more, and what was expected was not what was observed; anger, denial, shame, fear, frustration, guilt, despair, sadness, depression, confusion and dejection gave way to one critical emotion required on hearing such news – Hope.

Nurse was empathetic beyond measure as he cried tears and the hearer of the news consoled him – a time has come when if you heard the news, it was no more a personal death sentence but an opportunity to make life worth living.

They go on to do great things and no one is any wiser about the great burden they carry as they make light of that to concentrate on doing even greater things.

They will live

Then around the world, the urgency to act is caught up in the politics of complacency, but thankfully, we would no more be prescribed beetroot but tablets that help mother give child life, that helps child avoid the orphanage and lets the people continue to be productive members of society.

We shall not be identified by labels of separation and pariah, but live to celebrate anniversary after anniversary of those who live with a sentence but not one of death.

We shall see more days

Today is the twentieth, it would not be long till the fortieth – those who have slipped into memory encourage us to be heroes and those that remain teach us to understand our humanity even more so.

We shall not suffer in silence, our footprints shall be etched in the tablets of reckoning even though the sands of time blow over them – when the tablets are recovered, they who decipher the code of ages past would learn that they did not all perish – hope kept them alive and they were alive with hope.

Today is a day to celebrate hope. Hope, believe and live.