Olisa Metuh, the PDP is not the APC

 

Within hours of Monday’s bombing attack at Nyanya motor park on the outskirts of Abuja, the spokesperson for the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisa Metuh, without any pretence at any reflectivity whatsoever, penned a press release to blame the opposition party, the All Progressives Congress. Metuh’s release was callous, narcissistic and downright inappropriate. He wanted to take advantage of the situation in two ways: To pre-empt the APC’s opposition politics on the same issue and also to sell his party. But, he failed both ways. Absolutely!

It is painful that human lives – and the spectacle that destroyed them – could only inspire mindless politicking in Metuh. The bereaved families had probably not even mentally processed

their loss when Metuh, from the safety of his Wadata Plaza office, launched his political haggle. With the speed with which he pushed out the press release, it would not be out of place to ask him if he had foreknowledge of the attack.

This is not the first time that stooges of the ruling PDP would take advantage of Boko Haram’s nihilism to accuse opposition politicians of criminal conspiracy. In February, Pastor Reno Omokri, the social media aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, was accused of hiding behind a pseudonym, Wendel Simlin, to accuse the suspended Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Lamido Sanusi, of funding Boko Haram. Up till now, he has not denied the story. In another society, Omokri, aka Simlin, would be carrying the mark of Cain upon his head. Jonathan would have disowned him and nobody would touch him with even a telephone pole. Omokri is, unfortunately, sheltered by his masters whose disregard for  – at least – an appearance of propriety is almost legendary. Or, how else does one explain a situation where the President hits the campaign trail a day after a major bombing incident that claimed multiple lives? If Nigeria were a more serious country, we would be deliberating on Jonathan’s impeachment now.

Before Metuh started highlighting his party’s Mother Teresa values, did he go to the hospitals where the victims were being treated to either donate blood or volunteer to assist the emergency team? Up till now, has his party mobilised its members to do some volunteer job in the hospitals where the attack victims are being treated? Have they organised themselves into groups to visit families of the deceased? So, what on earth was he talking about?

Both Omokri and Metuh seemed to have learnt the how-to of opposition politics from the APC spokesperson, Lai Mohammed, a man who never hesitates to issue a press release on every PDP’s failings. Metuh anticipated Mohammed’s press release and thought that the best form of defence is a good attack. What he forgets is that the PDP is not the APC. For one, the APC is not the one responsible for providing security for Nigerians.

The failing of the Nigerian government over the Boko Haram issue is principally that of Jonathan and the PDP. To try to push it to others is not only irresponsible, but dumb as well. It is also pertinent to remind the PDP that the constant reference to certain individuals who said they would make Nigerian “ungovernable” for Jonathan is worn. There is not a single shred of evidence that Nigeria would have been better governed under Jonathan if that statement had not been made. Besides, if anyone, by words alone, can commandeer the magnitude of destruction as Boko Haram has done, then Jonathan should quietly hand over the Presidency to such people. If they can confound the state even without executive power, then we can channel their competence to more productive uses.

‘Killer Child bride’ and Senator Yerima’s sin

 It was almost a year ago when Nigerians debated the child marriage question. There was no resolution over the issues raised – that of citizenship and whether marriage should upgrade a female minor to an adult. The religious tinge around the issue was not even helped by Senator Sani Yerima who carried his demagoguery to illogical extent. He campaigned from one media house to another on why he, a middle-aged man, should be allowed to copulate with children. Yerima all but claimed that allowing him – and men like him –  to take child brides was a way of securing their morals.

The case of Wasila Umar should prick his conscience, if he has any. The 14-year-old has been on many international news sites after she was accused of killing her husband and three of his friends by feeding them rat poison. Umar claims she did not want to be married to her husband, a 35-year-old who already had two wives. Rather than live in misery, she took his life.

As much as I am against violence, I sympathise with this girl who was driven to a point of desperation by a society that would not have given her a voice otherwise. There are many things about her story that makes me sympathetic. She claimed she was allowed neither Islamic nor Western education. So at 14, what does she do with her life? Since the day she was born, it seemed she was merely marking time, waiting for the day a man would claim her.

Her actions are condemnable but what were her choices? She was socially, culturally and economically disempowered from the start so where could she have gone or to whom could she have turned to for help? What social and legal systems were available for her to explore her freedom from a life she would rather not live?

Did Yerima and his defenders ever consider the possibility that the girls in these marriages desire a better life than “servicing” paedophilic desires? Or they are too wrapped up in their ego to consider an alternative possibility – that these teen girls do not find them irresistible?

Umar’s story is such a sad one but then there is something to be said about her courage to resist an unwanted fate. What differentiates human beings from objects is our ability to resist, to push back and say to our oppressors, no more! We see this in the stories of heroic struggles of enslaved Africans who staged revolution, killed their master and his children or even committed suicide. And those who would condemn Umar’s action should take a moment to imagine themselves or their teenage daughters in a similar situation.