UWA

So many issues shattered the peace of this weekend in Nigeria, but I doubt any other news (including the rape of a girl by several men, and a teenage girl shot by trigger happy policeman) had the traction that the rape and death of Vera Uwaila Omozuwa

 had on and over Nigerians. I feel like rewriting what I just wrote now, because there's no peace to be shattered in Nigeria, not over a weekend, and definitely not over a working week. Even Covid-19 didn't have the power to protect Nigerians from unfortunate events, that will make any ear that hears it tinge. We don't know how to cry again in Nigeria, the voice of the people have been stifled by a regime that considers protests illegal, so you won't see, or you will see only a few brave people on the streets, so we turn only to social media to vent, and hope not to be found and incarcerated, as has been the case with missing Dadiyata for months on end, while politicians and those in positions of authority hardly add their voices to these things, that bug us on the streets, like they were of no consequence to issues of governance, and therefore have nothing to do with them.


During my university days on campus, after libraries were closed (I was even locked up in one, after I slept off), and classes were too far to walk to, buildings of churches and mosques were the next available and popular spots to go read. Tutorials also happened there, organized by Catholic, Pentecostal fellowships and Muslim groups, when it seemed like there was a competition to see which of the groups produced the better students. Another reason why they were choice spots was because there was always "light" in those places for some reason or the other, and unlike other reading spots, they were the safest, especially as regards the possibility of rape for female students, and mugging for both male and female students. Going to read in religious places is a tradition that preceded my time in school, and I was sure will succeed me. It stands to reason also that students who are not within campuses may also want to continue the tradition outside campuses. On these streets, we celebrated children reading under streetlights of busy roads while selling wares with their mothers, or on their own. A bank recently decided to sponsor a girl's education, after she was found using the light from their ATM to read. 

If we begin to list the reasons why Uwa decided to go and read at the church that fateful night, we might not be able to exhaust them all fully. However, what happened to her later that night would've been the last thing she expected, and especially at that location. Sadly, our police and policing haven't developed to the point where forensics could have been able to tell us whether the motive was murder, or attempted murder following rape, or attempted rape, and until a culprit that's not coerced to tell the truth, is found what we have as information regarding Uwa's death, remains just speculations by those who saw her after the dastardly acts have been committed, leaving her in a coma, from which she eventually passed on.

Even though the police mentioned something about finger prints on the fire extinguisher cylinder, I doubt Edo State police command has the wherewithal to pursue that, and if they do, which database have they to tally their findings with. An autopsy will definitely reveal the horrors she passed through, and cause of her death, but will not reveal who her perpetrators are. Sadly, the record of the Nigerian police as regards rape is abysmally poor and nothing to write home about. Before human rights activists, and bodies committed to fighting sexual violence in all its forms came to be, victims of rape had no one to turn to, as the police was known to further compound their predicament, even in cases where the rapists were caught during the act. On several occasions, the police that should protect victims, and bring perpetrators to book, championed so called "peace moves" and "settlement proposals" from the rapists' people to the victim's family.


It is the lack of justice for victims over the years, that have continued to enable rapists, the results of which is evident in the metro section of our newspapers daily. Even religious leaders are not left out as perpetrators, and babies even as young as a few months are not left out as victims, talk more of teenagers, young adults like Uwa, and women. When everybody was looking at India as the rape capital of the world, the news about rape in Nigeria was there, a constant, just like in South Africa, only that the world didn't seem to have our time. The Nigerian society looks like a society that enables sexual violence against females, and the reports are there, have been there, and once a while there's the noise either in sex for marks scandal in universities, or the occasional story on twitter that will trend for a few days, and then disappear, without any recourse to legal aid, but someone's life would've been scarred and/or ruined, sometimes for life, even when the seem to be enjoying family life, in seemingly blissful marriages.


I hope that the death of Uwa will not go the way of others. This is not the first time that a Governor, a Commissioner of Police, even the Inspector General of Police will be on a matter, yet justice will remain a fleeting illusion. Nothing remains newsworthy in Nigeria beyond a week, and that's even when it's most dastardly, and usually it is overtaken by something worse making one wonder if the country isn't one big movie set for a horror movie. It is painful not to imagine how things can be done differently, seeing as the rhetoric is the same as has always been, when things like this happen. It is the helplessness Nigerians feel with the police and the criminal justice system, when crimes are committed, that leaves the Nigerian society with no option than to resort to self help, especially when the culprit is caught red handed. I want to be optimistic, but there's not even a straw to hold on to now. I pray the Almighty gives Uwa's family the fortitude to bear this great loss.


'kovich


PICTURE CREDIT:
- https://m.guardian.ng
- https://www.pulse.ng

AS TUFACE BACKS DOWN ON HIS PLANNED PROTEST

People who know me enough, know to bet against teams I openly support, hence when it comes to betting I hardly am your best bet in terms of predictions but I guessed something right this time around, unfortunately I didn't stake a claim publicly before it became reality, and so you could feel free to say "Yeah Right" in response to my veiled prediction. Maybe next time, I'd be more forthcoming, but the truth is that since talk about this proposed rally or peaceful protest or demonstration, which later had popular Nigerian artiste, Innocent Idibia aka Tuface aka Tubaba as its face became talk of town, with supporters and antagonists equally matched with daggers drawn, I'd personally spoken or written little about it on social media and outside of it, because somehow, having put several two and twos together, I felt it wouldn't hold. I didn't know however, that Tuface himself (who continues to endure personal attacks verbally thrown at him on all sides since pegging his name to the protests) will via YouTube cancel it, for now, for fear that it might be hijacked by vested interests, not aligned with the spirit of the protests, especially seeing that there are now genuine fears for the lives of protesters by no less, those whose constitutional responsibility it is to protect them (with precedence to boot).

TUFACE CANCELS PLANNED PROTEST.

The truth is that Nigerians are suffering, including those who are still playing ostriches, just because their man President Muhammadu Buhari is in power and they can't support any anything that may end up with power shifting from the north to the south (even with the likelihood slim to non-existent), the reason why he still has massive support in the North; or because they are too proud, like most southwesterners to admit that they fell for a well orchestrated scam in the last presidential election, even with their so called exposure and enlightenment; or because like southeastern politicians just because of a promise of power shift to the Igbo after eight years of Buhari, have now suddenly seen the "light", and in throwing their weight behind the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC by decamping in their droves from the People's Democratic Party, PDP with no thoughts for their brother, Deputy Senate President Ekwerenmadu whose position they've largely jeopardized unless he aligns with them and switch as well to the ruling party.

By dawn, when Nigerians wake to the news, those "Standing With Buhari" will see this as a victory, while those in opposition will lick their wounds, but the discerning will see this as another missed opportunity to demand that those in power be accountable to the people on whose behalf they exercise such powers. I have watched how some commentators in the past few days have missed the point in stating their positions, forgetting that protests are a cardinal part of democracy, more important even than the elections which is like the fuel for the engine that drives democracy, of which the work itself is in the driving, navigating through the bumpy parts and maintaining the vehicle. But they say, if we don't like a government we should simply wait four years to change it (rather than demand a change midstream even of the people in power who promised change, but appear only to have strengthened the old ways of doing things), as if we are all guaranteed to be alive in four years.

NIGERIA'S SHIP OF STATE.

I saw Nigerians, some of whom are leaders of thought, support the gagging of fellow Nigerians because they disagree with their stance on issues. Forgetting that the alternative to protests is something far worse, and that presently it's a slippery slope filled with smoldering embers that we are on, the flames of which this protest originally planned for Monday the 6th of February would've helped to douse. You could feel the anger in Nigerians when they speak on the streets, at newspaper stands,

on call-in programmes in the electronic media, in vox-pop sections of newspapers, to the social media, and some have gone ahead to express their displeasure in the rising rate of crime and criminality because of the hardship that the name Buhari now seems to embody and connote. Yet, when a group thought it wise that people should channel their anger in the orderly manner that a protest avails, as the constitution allows, some of their fellow country men, including the police charged with the responsibility amongst others, to maintain law and order, besides providing adequate security for protesters not only decided to frustrate the move, but at every point warned against holding the "peaceful" protest, even when the "Acting President" declared that Nigerians have every right to protest. Though in retrospect it's difficult to not read between the lines to find that he may not have matched action to his words, going by the manner the Inspector General of Police appeared to still issue a statement after that banning any protest, (in his estimation) for and against the government in power.

I understand that the ruling party will be weary of protests against its policies (that's even if they have any), as they should ordinarily, seeing that their ascendancy to power was on the back of protests such as this a few years ago, and because of extenuating circumstances, feel that this one may be politically motivated, just like they did while in opposition, unfortunately they will leave so very undone the very democracy for which they are beneficiaries today, as more Nigerians continue to bottle up their pent up anger at an aloof president, a veepee with hands tied, a selfish parliament, and weakened judiciary, with an Acting Chief Justice whose confirmation hangs in the balance and may have to quit in days, after holding the reins for just three months, because (according to widespread belief) he doesn't fit the geopolitical requirement for such a high position that he should normally live and have progressed into.

Finally, the greatest shame of all. The police that has yet to reform itself to become the police of the people, like they've become everywhere else in developed democracies, and not just phalanges of the president and people in power. I don't even know the generation of officers who will be committed to help bring Nigeria to the comity of "civilized" nations via exemplary policing amongst the present set of all cadres, starting with management of protests. Even with all of President Donald Trump's hatred for opposition, he didn't order a crackdown on protesters (who exponentially trumped the number of those at his "empty" inauguration) against his "knee-jerk reaction" executive orders. One of the reasons many people gave this

Buhari regime a chance was because of his Vice President 'Yemi Osinbajo, a law professor and former Attorney-General of Lagos State, and for him not to have gone beyond just mouthing support for this protest, definitely not against his party but for the right of Nigerians to do so, and insist on them being allowed as guaranteed by the constitution, injures the soul. In another opportunity where he's left to clear the mess after his boss, who once again is out of the country on "vacation", he forgets easily, the eternal words of the late President John F. Kennedy, that "those who make peaceful revolution (change) impossible, make violent revolution (change) inevitable". Mtcheeeeeew!


'kovich



VIDEO CREDIT:
- https://www.youtube.com


PICTURE CREDIT:
- NIGERIA FIRST STICKERS by RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS OF NIGERIA