‘Justice is the first condition of humanity’. – Wole Soyinka
‘No agreement’ – Fela Kuti. I believe that album is one of the many that describes the very essence of Fela Kuti, who himself was a lifelong victim of man’s inhumanity to fellow human beings.
The Abacha junta sentenced Beeko Ransome-Kuti for faxing Obasanjo’s travails abroad. He did that in spite of the crime the same Obasanjo allegedly committed against his family during the Kalakuta Show crisis in 1977.
One doesn’t need to agree with Sowore as a person. I’m afraid I must disagree with his tactics. But then, if anyone looks away when a person’s fundamental human rights are being violated, I don’t have any apology in describing such people as less than subhumans.
After various idiotic excuses, the almighty State Security Services released the guy only to attempt to rearrest him the following day in a show of shame inside an Abuja courtroom. His lawyer, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, himself a veteran of many injustices, later drove him into the security outfit’s offices where he was promptly clamped into detention.
I’m not saying Sowore shouldn’t be tried. But he should have his day in a court of competent jurisdiction.
The government must obey the orders of its own judges regarding bail. I wonder why El Zakzaky, Dasuki, and others are still detained despite court orders admitting them to bail.
By the way, I do fervently believe only a person living in Mars would believe Nigeria doesn’t need a revolution.
I wonder why the word, revolution, has become strange to this government.
In the latter days of Obasanjo’s military regime, he introduced a back-to-the-farm project that was termed the ‘Green Revolution’. It was also known as ‘Operation Feed the Nation’, whose initials—(OFN)—are curiously the same as those of ‘Obasanjo Farms Nigeria’.
The second republic President – Shehu Shagari – introduced the ‘Ethical Revolution’.
For crying out loud, what did Mr Buhari imply when he said the baboons and monkeys would be soaked in blood after the 2011 elections? Did the heavens fall? Was he even called for interrogation, not to talk of being arrested?
So, what’s the big deal?
We should be careful in our deeds so that the words of Martin Niemoller, a German Lutheran pastor,
‘First they came for the
Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the
Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a
Socialist
Then they came for the trade
unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade
unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me’
will not, at the very end, describe us!
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