Those who accuse the police of being rude and crude should now be swimming in their senseless obstinacy. Why can’t we, for once, give them the credit they deserve?
Consider their recent breakthrough which nobody, including the authorities and those fastidious fellows who hide under all manner of nomenclatures, such as social critic, columnist and activist, to scold and scorn the police, noticed. It is yet to be acknowledged, let alone commended. Even the media have failed to herald it with the publicity blitz accorded such revolution in better climes.
The police have eventually found an answer to the disruption of public peace which plagues our polity, rendering all efforts at good governance a futility and giving our patriotic public officials nightmares.
Abusing a public official – name calling, sneering, mocking and disparaging – by making remarks the police believe to be uncomplimentary about him or her can cause a breach of the peace, the police have just discovered. Stop such abuses and what do you have? Peace. Peace and peace.
To test the efficacy of this landmark theory, which has been hailed for its profundity in intellectual circles, the police have bundled Citizen Deji Babington-Ashaye, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) supporter, before a magistrate in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, charging him with intent to disrupt public order by calling the distinguished Senator Kashamu Buruji “a drug baron and jail breaker”.
Babington-Ashaye, the police said, conducted himself in a manner that could lead to a breach of peace by using offensive words on Kashamu on a PDP WhatsApp group called “PDP match to victory”. He reportedly committed the said offence between March 13 and 14 at a location opposite the Community High School, Ogere Remo, according to the prosecuting officer, Sunday Eigbejiale, who claimed that the accused also challenged Kashamu to travel to the United States. Babington-Ashaye pleaded not guilty to the charge. He was granted bail and the matter was adjourned till March 30.
Ever since this matter went to court, there has been peace not only in Ogun East, the constituency of the distinguished senator, but all over the state. Now, people are aware of the grave legal and security implications of “using offensive words” on a public official.
Apparently confused about the workings of the new formula, which a police source told me would be deployed in all the other 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a student was asking me the other day to explain the connection between the senator’s private and personal peace and that of the state. He asked: “Couldn’t the senator have sued for libel? Is defamation an offence against the state? Is it criminal? How can abusing a senator or any public official spark a breach of peace?”
Not being a law enforcement officer or a legal expert, I could only try to explain to the fellow how it all began. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) actually attempted to seize Kashamu and repatriate him to the United States to, according to the agency, answer for alleged drug offences. Kashamu locked himself in, defended his innocence and screamed that he would rather commit suicide than allow himself to be bundled onto a plane and freighted to the United States.
The matter went to court and the NDLEA was asked to follow the due process, after it pleaded that it had the right to seize Kashamu and repatriate him to the United States where it said some unnamed accomplices of his had been jailed. The senator said in actual fact there was a case, but it had been tried in Britain and he had been exonerated. I am not the “Alhaji” they are looking for, he told the world. If there was such a person, he was quoted as saying, it was his brother who died and was buried a long time ago.
Now imagine what havoc would have been caused if the police had allowed Babington-Ashaye’s defamation to stick. Will Kashamu’s constituents allow their distinguished senator’s character to be so hacked in such a merciless manner without rising up in arms? Wouldn’t a war have broken out if the police had not moved that fast?
Why should Babington- Ashaye call Kashamu a drug baron and expect the police to stay calm, knowing that this could be a serious indictment on the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria if it was allowed to fester?
Does a citizen’s right to free speech include the right to heap insults on a senator, knowing that such insults could breach the peace? Is it not taking free speech to a ridiculous level when a constituent or any person for that matter, no matter how important, tells a senator where he should travel to?”
All those senators who have been unjustly maligned can now rejoice. The police, I am told, will soon press this innovation to their service so as to convince those who may think the action against Babington-Ashaye is a flash in the pan.
To be counted among such lucky lawmakers is distinguished Senator Dino Melaye, who has been lampooned as a spendthrift and an irresponsible man on account of what they call his “inability to keep a decent matrimonial home”. The police, I am sure, know the implication of allowing such a character assassination to go unchallenged.
What was Melaye’s offence? He expounded a powerful theory that only years of research by social science giants working under the best of conditions could have produced. He said he had discovered that to save the naira, the symbol of our economy, we should not just embrace local goods and services, we should marry “made in Nigeria” women.
The innuendo, said his critics, was unambiguous. He was accused of disdaining the respected Edo State Comrade Governor Adams Oshiomhole whose charming wife Iara is from Cape Verde.
Melaye was savaged from all sides. He was reminded of his crashed marriage and what they called his champagne life of wine and women. Peter Okhiria, the governor’s spokesman, hacked him down. He said: “The liberty of free speech guaranteed in the hallowed chambers does not impose lunacy on anyone to disparage other Nigerians. He is a man known for his vainglorious rodomontade and the childish display of his ostentatious lifestyle, which complement his love for foreign items.”
Okhiria called Melaye “a court jester” who is “tactless”. “We advise that Melaye should mend his ways with his ex-wife and concubines,” he admonished the senator.
Now, let’s imagine the police not acting on these scurrilously seditious comments. Won’t the good people of Kogi West, whom the senator represents, rise in defence of their beloved one? Won’t there be a breakdown of law and order?
A source has just told me of plans to deploy the new formula against those who still deride the distinguished Senator Sani Ahmed Yerima, the former Zamfara State governor, for his conjugal adventure with a girl they still describe as a 13-year-old minor, several years after the ceremony.
Why refer to a matter that could not be prosecuted even when it was very hot? The other day when the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) brought the former governor to court for allegedly diverting N1 billion meant for the repair of a broken dam, there were suggestions that he should be tried under the Sharia law, which he introduced as governor. The insinuation was not lost. Should Yerima be convicted, he would have his arm chopped off. Yerima’s supporters were enraged. The ICPC officials had to be hustled out of the area by heavily armed security men.
With the new formula, such an uprising of an otherwise good people provoked by a verbal assault on their dearest one will be prevented and public peace and order will be assured. Not so?
Just before the Rivers State rerun, Governor Nyesom Wike was being disparaged as one who rode to power on broken limbs, his election a blot on the political landscape. He swam onto the seat in the blood of innocent people, some said. Others, who obviously are His Excellency’s bitter political opponents, were just short of describing him in such sacrilegious terms as “a cultist” and “father of militants”, particularly when a man was beaten up and burnt alive.
Sending some of those suspected to have launched such verbal assaults before a magistrate will surely ensure that the peace so much desired by all is installed.
Nor should Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose bother any more about those who describe him as a “former bus conductor”, “stunts man” and “failed chicken farmer”, and his popular “stomach infrastructure” policy a mere deceit. The law will now take care of such felonies.
For two weeks, the social media have been awash with the news that Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai slapped his deputy, Mr Bala Bantek. His Excellency said yesterday that it was all lies.
The aim of this “wicked’ rumour”, obviously, was to disrupt the state’s peace, which the law on illegal preaching is supposed to keep and distract His Excellency from his interesting spar with Senator Shehu Sani. Has any governor ever slapped his deputy? The purveyors of this seditious rumour, I am told, will soon be taken before a magistrate.
Now watch out, all those whose pastime is to ridicule our public officials in the social media – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, BlackBerry and others – there will be no hiding place any more. The police will be busy combing such sites for deriding comments on public officials which can cause a breach of peace.
Ever seen a more revolutionary crime prevention device?
NATION
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