By Ikeddy ISIGUZO
You can also commit injustice by doing nothing. – Marcus Aurelius
PITCH darkness descends on Nigeria regularly enough that disconcerting as it is, darkness may be a distinguishing Nigerian feature that is not about to go away. Fewer places reflect the darkness, the neglect of the Nigerian society, than the fullsomeness of the energies for dispensation of injustice.
The entry of a young man, 30, more popularly known as VeryDarkMan, is pointing the light to some of the more embarrassingly darkened sides of our justice system. We should be grateful to him for his disruptions.
Without him, the minors who the President, in a rare case of momentary wakefulness, released, would have had their trials continued under a serious charge of trying to overawe the President’s administration. Minors, as they were, sick, hungry, all the traces of their stresses in full view, were put away for 60 days to allow investigations. Their deemed sponsor is out of reach of the law or above it.
The minors harvested from Kano, Adamawa, other States in the North, and Abuja, for waving Russian flag during their agitation against bad governance, and the increasing hardship in the country, were expected to bail themselves with N10 million each, and have senior civil servants guarantee they would not run away. They need N710 million to get out of detention.
The release and acquittal of the 71 teenagers, mostly beggars picked from the streets, to the Kano State government, is said to be a significant victory for human rights. We joke too much, too often. They had been held since August 2024.
Nobody did anything to release them. They had been forgotten. VeryDarkMan’s momentary detention was the opportunity that beamed the light on the dark recesses of Nigeria’s justice administration.
How many others who cannot afford the price of justice are still held illegally? Some minors, some adults?
The police, the Ministry of Justice, the judge, and all the routes that the children passed to jail, ignored the fact the arrested were children.
VeryDarkMan shouted enough that the next time they were in court, pictures and videos of their fainting went viral. They were hungry. They were sick. They were probably knocking on the doors of death.
Marcus Aurelius whose regnal name was Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, was a stoic philosophy, a Roman Emperor from 161 to 180, a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was among the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors and the last emperor of the Pax Romana, during which there was relative peace, calm, and stability for the Roman Empire from 27 BC to 180 AD.
He expects us to act in the face of a crime or brutal act. If we do not act, Marcus would rate our inaction a form of injustice.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it more succinctly. “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”.
We in different ways failed the minors charged to court in Abuja. They had no business being in jail and undergoing those dehumanising treatments that would stick with them for life. The courts were guilty.
Nigeria failed them particularly those who surround the President. They do too much worsening the public’s perception of the President. Not surprisingly, these same fellows are defending the arraignment of minors.
VeryDarkMan embarrassed them by asking for justice for the children. It was not long before people were questioning VeryDarkMan’s qualifications to dabble into human rights. He told them he had secondary school certificate. It was a disclosure that cut short whatever mischief they intended.
With all their education, their understanding of law and order, our Ministry of Justice easily mixing justice with injustice as they kept those children away for months. Who were they working for? Who do they account to? Is it enough to ask the children to go? With will be done to deter such official misbehaviour?
VeryDarkMan is the light that fights the pitch darkness that has seized the minds of the low and mighty in a mindless show of power, greed of immense dimensions, and the directionlessness that leads a nation that is speeding from one darkness to a worse one.
Who has forgotten the centres of concentric circles of conspiracies that cost Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen, Chief Justice of Nigeria his plum job in 2017. None of the processes were followed. He was passed through the Code of Conduct Bureau, and sacked. The courts are now annulling the judgements.
No whimper was heard from the Senate which was in full session throughout the processes that terminated his appointment. The Senate confirms the appointment of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, who heads one of the three arms of our democratic government. Our neutrality, as Achibishop Tutu would say, convicts us.
There are more judges and higher ranking persons that the targeted injustices of the past and the times are affecting. Justice is far from everyone contrary to thinking that some are safe.
When the unjust act, they are blinded by motives. Justice Onnoghen in a minority, dissenting judgement, annulled the election of Umaru Yar’Adua as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2007. Onnoghen’s judgement voted in support of Muhammadu Buhari. It was the same Buhari that illegally sacked Onnoghen 10 years later.
Nigeria is bound by an uncaring leadership that cannot even care for itself. It is now impossible to stop the national grid from collapsing as if its constant collapse will increase our GDP. The administration unrelentingly feeds the public excuses for the unmitigated failure to supply electricity which is not even cheap.
Are we not expecting too much thinking that an administration that has made a policy of blaming everyone for everything will care for us? The issue is not that it will not – it simply cannot.
Perhaps VeryDarkMan would next beam his light on other abuses of our rights, while Marcus Aurelius still reminds us not to do nothing about injustices whether against us or other people.
Finally…
CHIEF Baltasar Ebang Engonga, the Equatoguinean whose private tapes almost got more attention than the US elections has proven that human beings can make something of anything. Engonga, the head of his country’s National Financial Investigation Agency, ANIF, is also head of the group that produced the thrilling 400 tapes that would have shaken the box office, stands by his story that participants in the tapes were not forced. I have heard several conclusions about the matter that introduced Equatorial Guinea. Not since the 2000 Olympics when Equatoguinean Eric Moussambani Malonga swam the 100 m freestyle on 19 September in a time of 1min 52.72 secs has the country attained monumental global attention. Moussambani had trouble concluding the race, but he set the record for the slowest time for the event. His time was more than twice regular times for the event. I doubt if we will ever know what Engonga did or understand it enough to pass a judgement.
YESTERDAY, Honourable Alexander Ikwechegh, the House of Representatives member for Aba North/Aba South returned to his constituency to share free petrol and kerosine. He no longer needs to apologise for slapping an Abuja uber driver Mr. Stephen Abuwatseya thrice. After waking Nigerians up to another shade of the oppression we face, Abuwatseya has apologised to Ikwechegh and absolved him of any wrong-doing. The cab man even said he should be blamed for provoking the lawmaker. I apologise for VeryDarkMan who the case wings to fly. VeryDarkMan has already apologised to Ikwechegh. Congratulations, Honourable, there is no better time to commence the 2027 campaign than now.
WHAT did Americans do that is shocking Nigerians? Did we not vote for Muhammadu Buhari? Then followed it up with Bola Ahmed Tinubu? If you sequence a Donald Trump-Joe Biden-Trump administration, the dissonance would not be much different from what Nigerians are suffering. The only difference, though, is that America has standing institutions (they ceased to be strong a while ago) that Trump cannot trample on, completely.
THOSE against Senator Remi Tinubu, the President’s wife, and Nuhu Ribadu, National Security Adviser leading national prayers as the elixir for national security and the tough times, in a week that Peter Obi suggested that productive hours should not be invested in prayers, have more work to do. Since we delight in citing foreign examples to support things we want to foist on others, how are these important national policies managed elsewhere?
ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues
