Ibrahim Dan Gabas
25 November 2007
opinion
Abuja — The greatest question that Mike Okiro, newly decorated substantive Inspector-General of Police should be asking himself is - how do you deal with a sacred cow?
Especially with the mock Abuja arraignment on a one-count charge of Ibadan chief, Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu. It beats anybody's imagination, that in a university town like Ibadan, some newspaper reporters see no-one worthy of being interviewed except thugs. Asking a thug to comment on any issue of national importance is like asking an illiterate farmer to comment on the composition or use of the microchip!
I have never seen Adedibu discussing any issue on teevee. If he is that erudite, how come he is never interviewed by the BBC, CNN or any serious publication outside Nigeria. How come when you google his name you never find a worthy biography but quotes attributed to him by lazy boned local reporters married to the sensational and the salacious and of course buoyed by their quest to augment their poor earnings through brown envelopes?
Under Obasanjo, Adedibu fought an elected governor for failing to allocate to him a monthly stipend of N10 million from tax-payers money! Rather than subject him to serious tongue-lashing, he was called the strongman of Ibadan politics a city where Omololu Olunloye, Richard Akinjide and the likes of the late Adisa Akinloye reigned! Insult! But he did not end there, he went ahead and mobilised his guys and they sacked the entire state assembly. This was at a time when Nuhu Ribadu had buses moving legislators in and out of states under armed escort to perform certain legislative functions against their governors!
Outside government, Obasanjo this year moved from calling Adedibu a Garrison Commander of an inexistent army to describing him as the father of PDP? This is enough for any sane person in that party to call for a retraction or retrace their steps. A party fathered by a thug cannot offer peace. And Adedibu has no blood of peace in him. Some thugs sacked a radio station and patrol the streets of the city with machetes cutting anyone they saw in sight. The state Commissioner of Police found no evidence to charge a top PDP member! That was not good for him as a law officer more than it is an assault on our collective psyche. But the worst atrocity to my mind is the fact that an Ibadan chief organised his thugs to go and re-open factories selling fake and expired drugs in Ibadan, after their closure by a federal agency - National Agency for Foods and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
It is a shame that any human being on this earth would be allowed to sentence fellow humans to the trauma that sufferers of liver and kidney diseases suffer as a result of consuming these toxic substances. Akunyili was not playing to the gallery when she made the allegation and yet nobody asked her for evidence to nail this thug. And so, after a plethora of condemnations by people, the police invited Adedibu to Abuja and slapped him with a one-count charge in a country where traffic offenders are slammed with elongated trumped charges and sentenced to long jail terms. We live in a country where people who go around hawking to augment their living are arrested, wrongfully detained and sent to jail. We live in a country where the likes of Hamza Al-Mustapha, Ishaya Bamaiyi and several others have been placed in detention and trial for several years for allegedly attempting the life of a single person. But elsewhere, someone is suspected to have indulged in some more serious criminal activities, yet he is slapped on the wrist and let go.
I mean, we all know that a Magistrate's Court in Abuja has no jurisdiction to try a man who committed a crime in Ibadan - there are, for God's sake enough courts in Ibadan to do the job. How come a man who prevented a federal agency from doing its work, unleashed terror on innocent citizens for failure to get a bribe etc etc is being charged for conduct 'likely to cause a breach of the peace.' For God's sake, why then did we jail Ganiyu Adams and Frederick Fasehun? Why in God's name is Asari Dokubo allowed to spend a day in prison? Why is Ralph Uwazurike kept in jail and given impossible conditions? I mean, each of these people can possibly argue that they have never shed innocent blood? Why are the law officers able to lay serious charges on these people and keep them?
I don't have answers to these questions but those are more multi-million Naira questions that Okiro should be asking himself. From my own side, I think that Adedibu is a soapsud, a mere paper tiger. Which school did Adedibu attend? Where did he graduate? What is his training? What is his relevance beyond his Molete residence?
These are the real questions every reporter who pushes a microphone into the mouth of Adedibu should first ask himself before he brings back a headline-catching caption for his editor. Methinks if the media relegates Adedibu to his level - as a dreg of the society, his nuisance value will at least reduce, then if he attempts to flaunt what he does not have, Okiro should put shackles on his hand and foot and keep him locked - perhaps for life! Why? Deterrence! No country should be seen to be shielding thugs.
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