Change has to come

"The Army is a broad sword, not a scalpel. Trust me, senator - you do not want the Army in an American city."

---William Deveraux (from the movie The Siege)

Dateline: June 2002
Venue: Dockyard Road, Apapa, Lagos.

Chxta and one of his closest friends Obi (UNIBEN students from a certain era will remember him as Hollywood), were headed to visit a friend in the Festac area. We had taken a bus from Ojuelegba and disembarked not too far from Anjorin Market in Apapa. While walking to the point where we expected to get into another bus and continue our journey, we saw some policemen vandalising a young man who couldn't have been much older (or younger) than we were. Hollywood muttered something ostensibly under his breath about policemen and their silly brutality. Unfortunately for Chxta and Hollywood, one of the men heard his remark and with absolutely no questions asked, Chxta and Hollywood were added to the festivities happening on that road. The erstwhile 'meat' was forgotten. There was no one to make a movie of what happened, and CNN i-Reports was a utility that was sometime in the future. Neither Chxta, Hollywood or the other 'piece of meat' had fathers in the National Assembly.

So much for the fond memories, back to the present...

About three hours ago I got a call from that most loyal of friends known to y'all as The Law. He called to inform me that Adams Oshiomhole had been declared governor of my home state. My response to that was, 'I know'. What I should have said was, 'Great news'. But forgeting the semantics of what was said and what was not said, the verdict by the Court of Appeal is historic in every sense. It once again sends out the message that the Courts are beginning to send out concerning the 'rape' of our nascent democracy. We shall not tolerate this.

However, there is something more important that is in the air, something else that we have been tolerating and which can not be allowed to coexist with our democracy. That thing is our acceptance of a rather brutal system. Of course it is no news that a few days ago, Uzoma Okere, a young Naija girl was subjected to a beating at the hands of some members of the Nigerian Navy. It is my opinion that two things contributed in making this incident front page news: the fact that someone was kind enough to record the incident on a mobile phone, but probably of greater importance than that, is the fact that her dad is of a relatively high position within our current scheme of things. I personally haven't signed any petitions about this incident, or commented about it because the truth is this: had Uzoma's dad been a nobody, we would never have heard about this even if it had been placed on a thousand CNN i-Reports.

You want an example? Does anyone still talk about Augustina Arebum, Ekene Isaac, Chinedu Meniru, Tony Nwokike, Paul Ogbonna and Ifeanyi Ozor? We have forgotten them. In a three month stretch last year the Nigerian Police killed 785 people. Most I can bet were extra judicial killings. Are any of these people less important than Miss Okere? And no one should tell me anything about high horses here, I have been a victim of police brutality on no less than four occasions, including the one I told you about earlier. I have also 'chopped a slap' from an Army Sergeant in front of the Ikeja Garrison, this despite the fact that had my mum not had her way 12 years ago now, I would probably have been receiving salutes from the same man now. So I have experienced paramilitary brutality first hand.

As is usual with her, Solomon Sydelle has a series of excellent posts concerning Ms. Okere's plight. She also has a series of excellent posts about another case of government brutality, the arrests of Jonathan Elendu and Emeka Asiwe. People aren't making as much noise about those as they are about Ms. Okere.

It is time for us to face certain hard truths here: Nigerian psyche unfortunately is one that has been brutalised for close to a century. We have put up with a lot of crap, and are going to continue putting up with a lot more. Great example is the British Airways fiasco of a few months back. BA still flies in and out of Nigeria without too much care in the world, and we still pack their planes. Yes, I have to admit that I failed woefully in convincing family members to dump that airline, and like most others who still remember, have silently embarked on my personal boycott. But would BA care less about just me (and a minimal number of good men)? I sincerely doubt that. The BA example isn't the only one. I can guarantee that in the time it took you to read this, someone, somewhere in Nigeria has been at the receiving end of a beating, and it is not necessarily from the military. It could be from people he knows. And nothing will happen. He will not report it. Over a year ago, I wrote about a kind of incident all too common in Nigeria, sexual harrasment. Yesterday, nine boys were convicted of raping a girl here in the UK. No one said anything stupid such as 'she attracted them'. They raped her, she reported. In Naija, because of the kinds of comments people would make, she would have borne her cross in silence. Then we expect things to change overnight?

No Jose, they won't. Soldiers would beat up another young lady quite soon. And it is the fault of all of us.

The Nigerian military is the relic of a colonial era when its main purpose was to keep the citizenry in check. Of all our armed services (including the Police) only the Air Force was formed post Independence, the rest simply wore new uniforms, and have been used by our various governments including civilian governments to keep the population in check. This attitude has yet to be eradicated. But placing the blame on the colonists (or the military) is splitting hairs. The British Army of today is the same one which carried out the Peterloo Massacre almost two centuries ago. The US Army is the same one that violently put down the New York Draft Riots. Some of you might wonder why I'm digging up 'ancient' examples, so I'll throw in two fairly recent ones: the French Army's behaviour towards its own citizens in Algeria even after de Gaulle had declared, 'Algerie Francaisse'. Then we all know about the shenanigans that the Americans have pulled off in Gitmo, albeit not against their own citizens.

In more advanced countries of the world, the military is housed away from cities. In remote locations where they can't come into contact with 'bloody civilians'. There is a reason for this, and that reason is obvious to anyone who is thinking straight. By their very training, military men are volatile. They shouldn't be seen parading through Nigerian streets.

Recommended reading: Confronting A Culture Of Brutality & Injustice