By Godwin Etakibuebu
I am not always so sure about the number of people in corridor of power in Nigeria who are sane. Our country is peculiar in all ramifications. It is very distinct from every other nation on this earth. It is a place where common sense is a scarce commodity. Yet, somebody from old; obviously one of our ancestors, called it “common sense”. The scarcity of it remains most pronounced at the arena where Nigeria is most heard – at the most top, within the corridor of power.
What about sanity? Going “up there”; towards the corridor of power, to look for sane people is actually the beginning of madness in Nigeria. If one wants to meet with those that are driven with hundred percent sanity; sorry, there is no 100% sanity in any human being because in every one hour of our daily actions, we sometimes display a minute or so of madness, the best place to face is just going “down toward those in the valley”. It is there, within the locals or what l once called the “down-trodden Nigerians” that you can find both sanity and common sense.
The recommended places for discovery of tested sanity; and also common sense, are there in the villages and hamlets across the nooks and crannies of this country. Sanity and common sense refused to follow those migrating from the rural areas to the urban cities or they [sanity and common sense] just refused relocation to the metropolitan places. This must have been the reason why these two most essential commodities are not the properties of the City’s dwellers.
Even then there is distinct categorization between the successful city dwellers and the “ghetto-type” city dwellers in acquisition of these two commodities – sanity and common sense. The successful city dwellers are the glamorous politicians; both those voted for and voted against. They are those appointed into political offices by those that you and I voted for [sometimes those we thought we voted for actually “cornered or stole” the votes]. They are mostly the Public Servants or government appointee. They are those General Ibrahim Babangida called Elite Nigerians, whom he accused of “destroying Nigeria”. They are the most insane and totally lacking in common sense.
The other group earlier referred to as “ghetto-type” of city dwellers, are Nigerians citizens also, except that they are not just privileged to be amongst the heavy thieves that are crown princesses and princesses in stealing billions and trillions of Naira. They are not those that are privileged to deploy the instrumentality of defection from one Political Party to another with arrant impunity. They are not those that deploy instrument of State to garner stupendous wealth that only death can “put asunder what kleptomania has brought together”.
They are not those that have power of life and death over every other citizen, or so they thought. They are not even those that speak a plain language to those they employed, telling them “go ye to steal and multiply” or interpreting the rule of the game to them that “though shall not be caught”.
In all, the difference between these two groups basically is that while was totally insane and lacking in common sense the other has common sense and replicated sanity. Let us look at an issue in today’s contemporary Nigeria to understand and be able to differentiate those that are mad and lacking in common sense from those that are the opposite camp.
How on earth a Judge would ordered bail for Sambo Dasuki, saying that the former National Security Adviser should be released from illegal prison and go to the comfort of his house after just about “only” three years in detention? Is this Judge “sane”? Or is he not afraid of his own life? Ordering the release of General Muhammadu Buhari’s captive? Is the Judge not aware of “more than 100, 000 Nigerians that Dasuki killed”, according to the unsubstantiated allegation of the Attorney General of the Federation in an undocumented charge sheet?
It seemed that this particular Judge did not know whom the current presiding “lion of the jungle” is and that is where the learned Justice draws my maximum sympathy. If only he had known the “Lord Mayor” he was dealing with to be the same man that traversed the Nigerian land scape between the early hours of January 1, 1984 and somewhere in the middle of 1986, he would have melted away with his judgment in the chamber.
Or if he were to be “sane” enough, it would have helped him to reconsider his pronouncement. But someone told me that the Judge was fully convinced that he was dealing with a “born-again” democrat in the person of the once military maxim leader. Or it could be that the Judge just decided to throw caution to the wind in dispensing justice with the full understanding that history shall aggregate a place of honour in common sense and sanity to him when posterity will do justice to events of our time in years to come. And then, only then, shall separation of madness and uncommon sense be properly accommodated in the warehouse where they belonged, the “hottest place in hell”; as Senator David Mark once called it while presiding as Senate President some years ago.
His Lordship Justice Ijeoma L. Ojukwu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, who gave the order was told that Dasuki “is being kept by the [Buhari’s] State; because this cannot be the Nigerian State obviously, in the interest of the Larger Public good because government [Buhari’s government] is about the people and not only for an individual”. Simply put, a Dasuki has no right to freedom, ditto life in a Nigeria where Buhari presides.
This is the submission of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice for Buhari’s Nigeria, in defending why the government would never obey a Court’s order, releasing Sambo Dasuki on bail. Yet there is no charge of murder against Dasuki in any court of law in Nigeria except only in the wicked mind of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria acting as a defender of Nigerian citizens.
The irony of the Sambo Dasuki case is the fact that this Court’s order for his freedom is the sixth along the line of such orders from different courts of competent jurisdiction. Yet, Abubakar Malami; the Attorney General, says no way for his principal in obeying this court order. In other words Malami’s principal; Muhammadu Buhari, choses which court order he obeys and which one he throws into the dustbin.
But come to think of it, is it only the retired Army Colonel and former National Security Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan; Sambo Dasuki, that has no right to liberty and life in President Buhari’s Nigeria? The obvious answer stirs us directly on our faces. In the beginning, as the Holy Bible told us, the blood of Abel cried to God from the ground and the Holy God avenged that blood that cried to Him. Cain; the murderer of Abel paid for the blood of his junior brother even as a vagabond into eternity.
What this episode amplified to mankind is that the God of heaven who is our Creator is a God of Justice and at the same time – God of Vengeance. He is a complete Avenger of all His creatures’ actions. As such, the present situation in Nigeria shall never escape his scrutiny and intervention. It means that the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice chosen way of interpreting the courts’ pronouncement under review shall suffer a colossal damage within the natural temple of justice before long.
I call this the tyranny of insanity and evaporation of common sense. However, justice; natural justice, shall reign and prevail at the end of this dark tunnel. It is just a matter of time.
Godwin Etakibuebu; a veteran Journalist, wrote from Lagos.
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- I am still putting the promised odyssey of my late friend; Ibrahim Coomassie, the former Inspector General of Police [1993-1999], who died on Thursday July 19, 2018, on hold as l should visit the family first before completing that assignment.