August 14, 2019

Entertainment industry involves big money. The irony of the industry is that while the visible players are extremely visible, the invisible ones; the producers, the financiers, the investors are often very invisible. Those invisible players call the shots. When a problem blows out as it happened with Tekno showing of semi-nude dancers in a display truck last week, you can never tell who is behind the scene dousing tension. The latest on the case is that the producer of Tekno’s latest music video, Mr. Lawal Tijani, has explained the incident and apologized to the government and the people. That is it. No real businessman will waste time arguing or fighting with government. Just apologize and save their face - make the officials feel good about themselves. With the apology and explanation, the case is resolved, tension doused and business goes on. The artists are artistically minded. They can hardly be bothered by politics. This incident has also shown a number of things. Tekno is a highly popular artist. The outpouring of support for him was extraordinary. Also, it shows that those in government whose job it is to regulate the industry are totally out of touch. They do not understand the dynamics of the industry they regulate. Hopefully, this will be a lesson.

On August 14, 2019, Punch Newspaper, by Samson Folarin, reported a case of multiple murder committed by Nigerian soldiers. The story was ominously titled, "Beasts of No Nation: How four soldiers shot man, killed another in Ogun hospital" The story went as follows: -------- The Ogun State Police Command has said soldiers from the 81 division were involved in the killing of some residents of Isheri Olofin, a boundary community between Lagos and Ogun States. The police spokesperson, DSP Abimbola Oyeyemi, said statements from eyewitnesses revealed that the soldiers dragged a resident from the hospital where he was being treated and stabbed him to death with a bayonet. Our correspondent had earlier reported that during the celebration of the Isheri Day Festival on Monday, a disagreement broke out among some residents. In the ensuing fracas, some soldiers were reported to have shot dead three people at the party. A statement by the Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, Major Clement Abiade, had denied military involvement in the killing, saying instead a soldier was injured. But the Ogun State Police Command in its statement by Oyeyemi said at least four soldiers were involved in the killings. He said, “The Commissioner of Police, Bashir Makama, has ordered a full-scale investigation into the “Isheri Day” shooting incident in Ogun State on August 13, 2019, by suspected soldiers believed to be from Ikeja Cantonment, with a view to bringing the suspects to justice. Oyeyemi said the command had contacted the military authorities in Ogun State and efforts were on to bring the suspected killer(s) to book. ---------- The critical thing here is that the Nigerian Police are now ready to prosecute Nigerian soldiers when they commit crimes. This multiple murder by soldiers would have gone uninvestigated. The police would have granted the soldiers immunity to kill. But no more. Also today, the soldier that raped a student in Ondo State was arraigned in court, again showing an increased determination to prosecute soldiers who commit crimes. In return, a journalist tortured by SARS in Port Harcourt is suing the police. According to news report,  "The journalist said he suffered a swollen knee after he was hit several times with wooden bars, while trying to take photographs of the harassment of a boy by the SARS officers at Mgbuoba in the Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the state." The war between the police and the military may work in the interest of the common man. Only they can check each other. Hopefully this will help the court find its voice in helping to hold military and police officers that commit crimes or abuse human rights accountable.

Was it that Nigerian officials were clueless that they failed to realize how obnoxious and odious the treatment of the Shiites has been in the eyes of the world? The real test of it is now on display in India. El-Zakzaky may actually be more popular than Buhari outside Nigeria. More people are willing to die for El-Zakzaky than are willing to die for Buhari and El Rufai combined.

1. Thousands of Indians demand the release of El-Zakzaky. This will continue to be the case. It will be totally absurd to think of further detaining El-Zakzaky upon his return to Nigeria.

In other words, Nigeria shot itself on the foot by mistreating the Shiites.

Irrespective of what you read in the books or what you may have imagined, the following are true about the Nigerian courts: 1) More than half of the judges and magistrates you may come across are corrupt. They will sell justice to the richer or more powerful party in any case before them. 2) More than half of the judges and magistrates you may come across are not the brightest people among their peers. If you check, you will notice that most of the judges were not in the top 20% of their classes. They became judges because they are not strong enough to compete in the private practice or they just need a relatively noncompetitive environment, and they have political connection to get appointed judges. 3) Nearly all the judges and magistrates you may come across are afraid of government officials and will do everything not to offend the government authorities. The more corrupt or less intelligent a judge or magistrate is, the more he fears government authorities and bends his or her judgment in favor of the rich or government authority. 4) In all situations, there are two things you need at least one of in order to have justice in Nigerian courts - You either have a very brilliant judge or you will need a political lawyer. A SAN is a political lawyer. They are generally more confident, more experienced and are naturally able to give the judge the impression that there will be consequences to any abuse of his powers. It is the fear of what would happen should he misbehave that forces the judges to treat the political lawyers more cautiously. While the SANs do it more naturally, any lawyer that gives the judge the same impression will get the same treatment. The political lawyers are very expensive. So, only politicians and very wealthy people can afford them. 5) The assumption that the court is the last hope of common man is actually a half truth. The court can be your last hope only if the judge is intelligent and not corrupt or you can afford a political lawyer.  In majority of the cases, the court is common man's nightmare. Indeed, some judges are dangerous people and worse than the police. 6) For reasons mentioned above, Federal High Court judges are better than State High Court judges. 7) The problem is that you don't know what judge you are going to have until he is your judge. In one DSS case, 10 men were brought together and accused of conspiracy and kidnapping. But these men actually didn't know one another until they met in the DSS cell. When they were brought to court, they applied for bail. The judge refused them bail because he did not want to offend DSS. And why? Because he had been a highly corrupt judge. While the case was still on, the DSS arrested 5 judges and he was one of them. Now, that he saw his career as a judge was coming to an end, he had to stop trying to be in the good book of DSS. One day, he told the 10 defendants that he knew all along that they were innocent, but that he had to transfer their case because he could no longer handle DSS cases. In other words, he knew all these 3 years that the case was in his court, yet he denied them bail. It was only after his bubble was burst that he had to admit the truth. The 10 men were granted bail by the next court to which their case was transfered.

In his prison cell, Emeka Ugwuonye, will probably be following the ongoing tension between the Army and the Police. One must wonder what goes on, on his mind right now. If he were a vindictive person, Emeka Ugwuonye would be rejoicing today. He will feel vindicated and he might say I told you so. But knowing Emeka Ugwuonye, he will probably be grieving for the families of those police officers killed in Taraba. He will probably agonize over the National tragedy under which our soldiers and our policemen will be shooting at each other. Emeka Ugwuonye is vindicated nonetheless. Since 2016, he has been warning the nation about the gathering dangers of undisciplined Security Forces (Soldiers, Police, DSS, NSCDC, etc) that do not care about human rights. The Nigerian police, including the IRT officers, are involved in gross human rights abuses, use of extreme force, disregard for right to life. Unfortunately, they failed to realize that the kind of violence they cherished could be visited upon their members by personnel of another security agency equally disposed to disproportionate use of force. Otherwise, why would the soldiers fire into the vehicle that contained the person they wanted to rescue from presumed kidnappers? The truth of what happened in Taraba may never come out. The Nigerian Police are disposed to reckless use of force. Likewise the Nigerian Soldiers. Nigerian Police have no reputation for honesty. Likewise the soldiers. The Nigerian Police have constantly abused the civilians. Indeed, nobody knew that they were capable of shedding tears. Emeka Ugwuonye tried to raise awareness about the abuses being committed by our police officers. Rather than appreciate his effort, the police officers implicated, conspired to fabricate false criminal charges against him, hoping to silence him. But while their lies kept Emeka in prison, the danger he warned against has been visited on the police. The police are now victims of violence, which they have visited on others. There will not be much tears for them. Their victims have no tears to spare. The sooner the police start listening to the likes of Emeka Ugwuonye the sooner we can stop this wanton bloodshed that has enveloped the nation. This ugly incident is a perfect opportunity for the reforms Emeka Ugwuonye and DPA have called for.

In the past one month, bodies of five women were found in hotels, presumed killed by men they met on the social media. We believe that more people die in the hands of people they met on social media, but their deaths go undetected and unreported as such. When you include other harms apart from death, thousands of people suffer in the hands of social media friends; the most frequent harm women suffer in the hands of men they met on social media is rape. Someone you met on social media invites you to a business meeting or he promises to get you a job interview. Or he invites you to an eatery or restaurant. Or he offers to drop you off after the meeting. Without meaning to scare you, any of these meetings can expose you to rape, and death if you resist. Most victims of rape are too embarrassed to report it. A rape victim is more likely to report it if the rapist is a bigger or more influential man like a pastor against a young church member or a politician against an ordinary person or a professor against a student or a soldier or police against a student. But when raped by a male contemporary or someone of lower social standing, or someone you were not supposed to be with, you will be too embarrassed to inform anyone. Another type of harm frequently suffered in the hands of friends you met on social media is scam or fraud. Women and men are equally victims of this. The man will promise marriage and the woman believing in his promise, begins to give him money. Or a young beautiful lady gives her male friend the impression that she is ready for romance. The man believing this, begins to send her money. When these promises are not kept, a perception of deception and fraud occurs. It is time we looked into these patterns of the deadly or harmful friendships, the reasons they occur and how to detect danger signals. DPA has studied so many complaints of these types of harmful encounters and has developed some rules to help reduce your exposure to risks. The most significant problem most people have is that they have little knowledge about mental health problems. Many people who look normal and well in pictures are indeed not well.  As you meet a person on social media, you should realise that this is a stranger and nothing can immediately change that. This is not to say you should be afraid of strangers; rather, it only reminds you that you don't know this person. Also, you need to treat the pictures a person displayed on social media in the opposite way you currently treat such pictures - the pictures are there to deceive you. Remember this: even for normal healthy people without mental health problems, nobody puts up a picture that is exactly him or her. Everybody who has the capacity to make his or her picture look better than real will do that. So, look for things outside the pictures. For a person to have a mental health problem does not mean that the person has to be shabby or acting noticeably strange. There may be certain psychosis (sickness of the mind) that nobody sees until it shows up in form of sudden violence. Many of the active social media community members do not know things like mania delusions, bipolar, etc. Once you are no longer satisfied with pictures as your only way of knowing people you're dealing with, you will be forced to look for better ways to know the truth about people you meet and that will save you from falling into the wrong hands. Avoid people who demand for sex or money so early in the friendship. It is always a bad sign. It doesn't natter his reason or her reason for such demands. When you ask her: "How are you?" and she replies "I'm hungry", end that chat.  That's a bad sign. When you meet a man who wants to marry you within a week of meeting you, that's a bad sign. When you meet a person who showers you with praises without knowing you well enough to justify those praises, that's a bad sign. The picture shown here is that of a lady (a single mother) that was found dead in a hotel room after spending the night with a man she met on social media.

A claim attributed to the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) has been made of how America has been frustrating El-Zakzaky's treatment in India. Such claim seems to have no basis. In fact, it reflects total ignorance about the international interest in the Nigerian Shiites problems. It further highlights the unfortunate predicament of the Nigerian Shiites. The IMN is spiritually allied to Iran just as the Nigerian Sunni Muslims are spiritually allied to Saudi Arabia. It is therefore expected that IMN would try to impress its master, Iran, by lashing out against America at a time of grave tension between America and Iran. It must be noted that when the Nigerian Government used the Military to suppress the Shiites last year, America led the world in condemning Nigeria and cutting off cooperation with the Nigerian Military. It was the pressure from countries like America that forced the Nigerian Government not to use the Military last month when the Shiites had their protest that led to the death of a Deputy Commissioner of Police, ultimately resulting in the release of El-Zakzaky. If American Government was against El-Zakzaky, Nigerian Government would not have relaxed its stance on his detention. It would have been easier to keep him in Nigeria and frustrate him where he is hated by the government than to wait for him to get to India. This raises an important point. The IMN should learn from its recent experience. Many people from different religious groups came out in support of El-Zakzaky. It will be unfortunate if the IMN reboxes itself back into old religious wars. There is no need to drag America into its problems except to impress Iran and get more favors from Iran.

DPA News earlier reported on the case of one soldier being fired from the Army for being among the soldiers that raped a female student at a military checkpoint. It was reported as a gang rape. Eye witnesses reported that the lady passenger of a public bus was ordered down from the vehicle by a group of soldiers for no reason except that she was a neat and good looking girl. The victim reported that after the bus was ordered to leave without her, the soldiers took her to a booth at the checkpoint and took turns to rape her. The Army investigated the matter after it appeared on social media. The Army fired only one of the officers, presumably the one that ordered her down from the vehicle. What happened to the other soldiers that participated in the rape? That question remains unanswered. After being fired, the single soldier was handed over to the police, and he will be arraigned in court today for rape.

For four years, the combined Federal Government of Nigeria and the Kaduna State Government persecuted Sheikh El-Zakzaky, his family and his followers, with the Army and Police teamed up to raze down their houses and settlement. They beat the Sheikh and his wife, seriously injuring them. They killed his three sons and estimated 1000 of his followers. For four Years, they detained the man and his wife and refused to release them. According to the followers of the Sheikh, the Nigerian Government severally tried to poison the Sheikh. Then all of a sudden, everything changed. The court granted the Sheikh and his wife leave to go for medical treatment in India. So any plan to kill him has been turned in the opposite direction. Nigerian Government even offered to provide private jet to fly them to India. But the Sheikh rightly rejected the offer and flew on his own terms. And once in India, he was received by the Indian doctors with much respect and professionalism. The contradiction did not end there. Sheikh El-Zakzaky was allowed to go overseas for treatment by a President that also goes overseas for treatment because Nigerian Government and the courts agreed there are no world standard hospital in Nigeria. For the Indian doctors, it must be a beautiful merging of medicine and International law and politics. They must have been well prepared to receive this man as an acknowledgement of the reputation of modern Indian medicine. They understand the world is watching and would like to save the Sheikh's life just to live up to their reputation. With the Sheikh out of Nigeria, he can easily refuse to come back if he wants not to come back. The last minute efforts of Kaduna State Government was useless. The degree of health challenges the Sheikh faces is such that it could take years for him to get well. And his Indian doctors will not discharge him until he is recovered. Apart from health reasons, he will easily succeed if he applies for asylum either in India or another country. But the Sheikh will like to come back to Nigeria. With millions of followers in Nigeria, that is his center of gravity. Nigerian Government will probably now treat with respect and deference a man they tried to kill.