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What of Al-Mustapha, Bamaiyi and Others? A Reply to Yushau A. Shuaib? By Clarius Ugwuoha
The piece captioned as above of November 7th
2007, written by Yushau A. Shuaib and published in the daily Sun
tabloid, is instructive. We are all victims of and witnesses to the
atrocities of the past in
Nigeria. But since we have evolved a democratic structure that
pretends to fairplay and equity, it is necessary to overlook the past
and turn a new leaf. It is not, by the protracted incarceration of
Al-Mustapha and others, in conditions seen as subhuman by their personal
confessions and by disinterested testimony, can we initiate appropriate
deterrent measures or fully redress all pieces of injustice of the past.
The fallout of military predation in our polity is phenomenal. It would
appear overtly vindictive to insist on continued trial of Al-Mustapha
and others while ignoring the fact that the accused were, in their
various alleged commissions, on orders from their superiors, even if
expressly guilty of over zealotry. The said offences were committed in
the hey days of military dictatorship and many other such heinous crimes
as alleged against them, have been cordoned in the present dispensation.
The seeming selective nature of the trials whereby the initiators of
these disastrous crimes are safely ensconced in their presidential
palaces while the circumstantial surrogates, who would ignore their
superior’s orders on pain of dismissal from service or elimination, are
being hounded from prison to prison in very dehumanizing circumstances,
is inequitable. The ex- CSO’s outburst of being denied access to his
family for many years is both pathetic and chilling.
Whatever became of Sgt. Barnabas Mshelia
alias Rogers, of whom unconfirmed reports were that he was pardoned and
conscripted into Chief Obasanjo’s terror squad? Are the purported
killers of Chief MKO Abiola and Gen. Abacha also being tried? When,
during the Oputa hearing many retd generals were indicted on gross abuse
of human rights, and these generals disdained off summonses by the
panel, were there any punitive measures canvassed against them as
correctives?
The mood today is reconciliatory and
futuristic. Nothing can be gained from protracted excitation of the
past. This writer does not, by this submission or appeal attempt to
attenuate the enormity of the pain visited on the good people of
Nigeria by repressive juntas. He is only canvassing for redress
of the past by means other than protracted legal tussle, a tempering of
justice with mercy with respect to Al-Mustapha and others, whose ordeal
in detention shall have mortified them into consciousness of the
transitory nature of power; and an evolution of a democratic order that
would make these crimes of the past difficult to perpetrate. We may
recourse to an independent human rights violation panel, whose
recommendations would not be treated with disdain or levity as in the
past.
Granted that the president, Alhaji Umaru
Yar’ Adua, was himself a prime victim of the past gangsterism, as seen
in the murder in detention of his brother, Retd Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’
Adua. Granted too that his present position of president
Federal Republic of Nigeria cannot be said to compensate for that
irreparable loss, he should probably look sqarely at the protracted
trial of Al-Mustapha and others and find a reprieve. Vengeance is God’s
and whatever was allowed by fate to occur should be seen in the light of
inevitability. A definite policy concerning past grievances, would not
only resolve the Al-Mustapha, Bamaiyi and others’ matter but also
resolve the age-old
Niger Delta question and make the continued incarceration of
activists like Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, for which the international
community had heavily criticized
Nigeria, unappealing. There is the saying of our people: if you
beat an erring child with one hand, you draw him back with the other.
Chief Clarius Ugwuoha wrote in from the
Ezeali Palace in Egbema.
WIth God, Nothing is
Impossible.
"Behold, I am the
Lord, the God of all flesh, is there anything too hard for me?"
Jeremiah 32:27
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