ON any occasion when the facade of sophistication
and sensitivity to the needs of their fellow citizens crashes, our leaders
are often revealed as a people who are scandalously ensconced in a
notion of self-importance that negates the humanity of those outside the circle
of their socio-political and pecuniary influence. It is because they are
deluded by this warped notion that they do not mind neglecting the poor
citizens to wallow in their abject misery or deliberately inflicting on them
policies that would seal their pulverisation and reify their overbearing
sense of importance.
This is why our leaders steal the money meant for the improvement of the lot of the people, divert the funds meant for buying weapons and yet send soldiers to the battlefield unarmed. But the citizens still appreciate the true worth of the life of the average Nigerian. This was demonstrated in the past few days by the outrage they expressed at the abduction of the Bayelsa girl, Ese Oruru, who was forcibly Islamised and married at the age of 13.
This outrage did not come from the leaders of the society who were complicit in the ordeal of the teenager. It came from those outside the realm of power. And without this, those who had the power to set Ese free from captivity would not have bulged. But since there is apparently official complicity in the ordeal of the minor, there is the danger that beyond the outrage that has led to her release, the culprits would not be punished .
And there is a worse danger in so far as a lack of punishment would spawn a recurrence of this aberration. For the case of Yunusa is only a grim upshot of the failure of similar acts of impunity in the past to tug the conscience of the nation and pave the way for appropriate sanctions. If the Yunusas of our society are not merely serving as minions for some privileged persons, they have only demonstrated that they have learnt enough to appropriate for themselves an art their masters have deployed to satiate their lecherous appetites.
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| *Ese Oruru - The Victim |
This outrage did not come from the leaders of the society who were complicit in the ordeal of the teenager. It came from those outside the realm of power. And without this, those who had the power to set Ese free from captivity would not have bulged. But since there is apparently official complicity in the ordeal of the minor, there is the danger that beyond the outrage that has led to her release, the culprits would not be punished .
And there is a worse danger in so far as a lack of punishment would spawn a recurrence of this aberration. For the case of Yunusa is only a grim upshot of the failure of similar acts of impunity in the past to tug the conscience of the nation and pave the way for appropriate sanctions. If the Yunusas of our society are not merely serving as minions for some privileged persons, they have only demonstrated that they have learnt enough to appropriate for themselves an art their masters have deployed to satiate their lecherous appetites.
