Our supreme curse

“Ki i gbebi f’alare Oba to l’aye o, Adanimagbagbe l’Oba Oluwa.” (Gloss: He doesn’t condemn the innocent, the King who owns the world, the Lord the king is He-who-does-not-forget-his-creation).

That was the Fuji General, Kollington Ayinla, serenading the Almighty, divine justice and providence. Ah, justice! That infinitely complex, involved concept that the Bard of Isara says is the prime condition of humanity. But long before Kongi, the bearded bard known for his strident non-conformism, picked up a pen and shook the world, the Bard of Avon had written these words: “Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves.” Centuries later, a no-nonsense columnist would speak of “purchaseable judicial bandits.” Martin Luther King Jr was quite audacious: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” I am not so sure these days. I have long frowned on the notion of a policy or activist court, but I am also not an uncritical and unreflecting textualist, knowing that justice is as much a spiritual as it is a physical thing. I recognise that for a variety of reasons, especially political ones, what is justice to you may be injustice to me. It’s quite true that justice is seen from angles marked by ideological underpinning.

Yet there is, it seems, a basic notion of justice readily available to even the blind, and I can’t help but feel a sense of outrage at some of the terrible decisions thrust upon the public space by our familiar joint. Weeks ago, a disturbing report said most bread brands in Ado-Ekiti, Ile-Ife, Port Harcourt, Yobe, and Lagos contain over 0.05mg/kg of potassium bromate. Just how can bread be poison? I was to have written on this topic but as I began to ponder recent events, it occurred to me that our justice system is just like bad bread. Hunger causes you to reach for a plate of beans, moinmoin or some other thing, and then with your bread you have a fill of decease and death. It looks like a crime against humanity, but what’s baked for us in the so-called temple of justice is worse.

By our apex court’s extremely perverse pronouncement on March 7, Adamawa farmer Sunday Jackson is to die by hanging for killing a Fulani herdsman in self-defense. I shudder to even retell this sad story:  on February 11, 2021, in Adamawa State, Jackson was on his farm when a member of the tribe of terrorists called Fulani herdsmen struck him with a knife. Grievously injured, the farmer summoned the courage of his ancestors and struck back at the would-be killer in the self-defense that nature, logic, law and commonsense bestowed upon him. But the individuals who recently told Nigerians that a group of lawbreakers who openly jettisoned the platform that brought them to power and thereafter plunged their state into chaos, acting the script of a haughty clown, had done nothing wrong, inevitably had other ideas. In a classic exemplification of the Yoruba saying, “Ika o je se tie be” (The wicked would never treat his own case in that manner), our judicial decisioners said the victim should have run away and not struck down the terrorist! You see, it wasn’t a judge or diplomat’s son that was involved. I thank God that there is a Lake of Fire in which wicked judges will burn out most painfully. If not for demon possession, how can anyone declare with a bold face that once Jackson had disarmed his attacker, he should have fled instead of retaliating? A man who had been viciously stabbed? And are we talking about the same killer herders that have given Nigeria a prominent spot on the Global Terrorism Index? So Jackson was to flee even with the grievous injuries on his body, and give the terrorist who wanted to kill him the opportunity to finish the job that his father, the devil, gave him?

That verdict has naturally attracted widespread opprobrium. Hear human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe: “The justice system has failed a man who acted purely to save his own life. This decision sends a dangerous message that victims of violent attacks have no right to defend themselves.” On social media, #JusticeForSundayJackson is trending. Well, if the governor of Adamawa State won’t save this innocent man, then may the land be tormented by his blood. Proverbs 24:23-24: “These things also belong to the wise. It is not good to have respect of persons in judgment. He that saith unto the wicked, Thou art righteous; him shall the people curse, nations shall abhor him.” This is the fate of oppressors. When their eyes are about to close in death, the wigged demons who rule this world will realise that they were never supreme over anything; that they were nothing but mere mortals. Now they can stage whatever brigandage they want.

In this country, nobody is the hope of anybody. If you are sick and you don’t have money, you will die. If your house catches fire and you and neighbours can’t put it out, then it will certainly burn to the ground. If your car catches fire in the middle of the road, it will burn steadily out as people film content for social media. The statement that an arm of the establishment is the last hope of the common man is one of the most elaborate scams to which we have been treated by political pirates. Intensely corrupt, luciferically evil and willingly blind, that joint that prides itself as the people’s bastion is so anti-people, anti-justice and anti-right that it beggars belief. If you must make a headway in this jungle, then learn very quickly that you are on your own. No padi for jungle. It’s like taking a strange person abroad: (s)he will be your doom very quickly.

I cast a glance at River State as I end these lines. All my life, I have never seen a governor so humiliated and a state so plunged into needless crisis. The same clowns who gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the chief executive locked the gates when he came to honour their summons following the disgraceful, evil, sadistic, inhuman, reckless and unfortunate outing at our court.

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