Justice Opara,
I'm glad that at least you take me seriously
and by extension so should some of your political allies
of the class known as the lootocracy
the crooks most directly responsible for bleeding the Nigerian people's economy.
A holy sonnet by John Donne
Dear Chidi almost every day I study about this and I am aware of God's mercy in our lives.
How do you think I feel when I read this? I should presume them innocent? No, I'm not bloodthirsty.
With me as commander-in-chief of the military, they should then have every right to fear Justice – and that includes Goliath. Just as you too have the right to presume lootocrats their innocence in spite of the mountains of evidence against them and the fact that in their hearts, they themselves know that they are guilty. In fact I should like Ogbeni Kadiri to be my Tunde Idiagbon! Babatunde O ye, to help institute some of the structural reforms that His Highness John Mbaku Esq has been insisting is the sine qua non to rooting out corruption that is otherwise so endemic and so deeply ingrained in some bureaucracies that it's popularly known as " the system"
You are absolutely right! If by the grace of the Almighty, I had been blessed as the next military man in charge of a certain African country, then, "The age -long practice of an accused being presumed innocent until proved guilty(by the courts) would have been abolished and the consequences would have been grave". That was a good poetic word that you used there: "grave". Better still, less abstract and even more directly to the point, you could have ended that sentence with the word , "deadly". "The age -long practice of an accused being presumed innocent until proved guilty(by the courts) would have been abolished and the consequences would have been deadly"
Here's the Devil's dictionary definition:
DEAD, adj.
"Done with the work of breathing; done
With all the world; the mad race run
Though to the end; the golden goal
Attained and found to be a hole!"
Only six months…
You would be doing me, you yourself , your good friend Goodluck Jonathan and my Ikwerre Brother Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi injustice if you think that as supreme military commander, I would send innocent men to the gallows or line them all up to face the fire squads, just for nothing. As I pointed out : five minutes to start vomiting di money or else yu go quench here right now and the vultures nah dem go eat your dead body tomorrow morning !
We don't want to take anyone's life. All we want is that the loot be returned and that includes that Bank Manager at number 10 Aba Road in Port Harcourt who stole my gratuity, 15% of my gross salary for two tours plus some other emoluments stashed in his bank in £ Sterling. I could have used connections but thought it better to let justice run its course. Personally, money is not that important to me but I hate corruption.
Some of these guys get held up with the alternative "your money or your wife" and without hesitation some could say, "Please leave my money alone, but you can take my wife" – but ask the same man wearing pants " Your money or your life" and they will start bargaining, "How much do you want?" and will invariably choose life….
This should not take long, as I said, just give me six months to clean up and then I would hand over to civilian power , after recovering much of the loot and good riddance to the most criminal elements in the corrupt elite. Does that sound too idealistic to your poetic ears?
And how do you like this part of Hamlet's to be or not to be soliloquy:
"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?"
Six months!
"The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer" was the motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. Other variations of this include "The impossible we do immediately, miracles take a little longer." Now dear Chidi, as commander-in-chief, if some of the religious Naija people were to then demand a miracle from me, just as they asked of Jesus,
"Then some scribes and Pharisees said, "Teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign", the first part of Jesus' reply ( King James Version) should come in handy: An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign…
And there you have it.
Yours sincerely,
Cornelius
It's time to update this:
On Thursday, 31 March 2016 13:36:43 UTC+2, Chidi Anthony Opara wrote:
Mazi Cornelius,
Thank God that you did not eventually become a military officer/ruler. The age long practice of an accused being presumed innocent untill proved guilty(by the courts) would have been abolished and the consequences would have been grave. Like my brother Chido Onumah, who is a good writer by the way, you would have been the accuser, the prosecutor and the judge.
One of the problems I have with the Chido Onumah well written narrative is that
Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, who should be in trial with others for allegedly plundering the resources of his state as governor is now being subtly presented as a role model
I have no problems with anti-corruption campaigns, I have advocated them in my poems long before the current hysteria, but I have serious problems with President Buhari's one sided anti-corruption.
Finally, I am happy that I joined this forum, otherwise, how would I have known that jungle justice is not peculiar to the motor parks.
CAO.
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