Editorial
Bolanle is just a number! Who’s next?
Nigerians woke up on Monday, to the shocking story of how police officers mowed down Bolanle Raheem, a 41-year-old lawyer, in Lagos, on Sunday, Christmas day. It was said that the deceased, who had veered into real estate and doing well in the business, was returning from church with her husband, little kid and sister, when they were flagged down by some policemen at Ajah roundabout on the Lekki-Ajah axis of Lagos. She was heavily pregnant, with seven-month set of twins
Hear from her husband, Gbenga Raheem: “On December 25, my wife, nieces, nephews, and cousins, who had come for the holiday, all went to church. On our way back, my wife said since it was Christmas Day, we should take everyone out, so, we went to a supermarket at Abraham Adesanya, then to Domino’s Pizza.
“After that, we headed towards Ajah to do a U-turn to come back to Abraham Adesanya. When we took the U-turn, we saw policemen stopping some vehicles. As we approached them, they said we should stop, and in the process, we heard a loud sound on my wife’s side window. All of a sudden, I saw blood gushing out of her chest.
“I immediately ran out; my sister-in-law, who was also with us, ran out and held the policeman; he cocked his gun at her too. Talking to him was pointless, so I went to see if anything could be done; I saw my wife gasping for breath, and by that time, my sister-in-law had brought the policeman into the car and pushed him into the front seat.
“We drove to a hospital but they said they couldn’t handle it; we eventually took her to Grandville Hospital, where she was confirmed dead. The policemen took her body and put it in the truck; they wanted me to follow them but I said I needed to go and settle my children.”
Shocked? You could only be if you were a stranger to the atrocities of men in uniform in Nigeria, especially the police. There are several gorier, eerier and more outlandish episodes in the past to underscore the mindset of the people we are talking about. Perhaps, few examples will suffice.
Indeed, many Nigerians may have forgotten the Apo Six debacle that began with the killing of six young people – five traders and a lady girlfriend of one of them at the spare parts market in Apo District of Abuja in 2005. But the details still remain as stark as they are chilling. Many would yet recall some of the revelations at the Special Investigative Panel (SIP) conducted by Justice Goodluck Olasumbo set up by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. One of them particularly stood out.
Recall how the police team that carried out the murder gave a special treatment to Tina Arebum, the lady at the centre of the bestial murder, whose rejection of the advances infuriated the officer that supervised the carnage. It was said that a six-feet nail was inserted into her nose and driven with the boot of her torturer at the Apo Police Station.
This was done in the presence of a group of policemen, who stood by and watched and obviously enjoyed the show, as revealed by the panel. Nobody tried to restrain or intervene to minimise her pain and suffering. At least, if she must die, let it be quick and decisive like the others who were killed with bullets. But for having the temerity of snubbing an officer, she must die in the most excruciatingly painful manner the mind could conceive. That captures the mindset of the people we are talking about.
Of course, but for the hand of fate, they had the entire case wrapped up. Providence manifested in one of the initial two survivors, who contacted one of his brothers on phone to narrate what happened, before he was eventually killed himself by the police hunters. It was the brother who spilled the beans. Otherwise, the entire six had been designated as armed robbers. The usual evidence had been procured.
Two locally made pistols, two live cartridges, two expended cartridges, two daggers and one cutlass were displayed purportedly recovered from the victims’ car, as evidence. In fact, the victims, had all been buried in shallow graves at the back of the police station to put a final seal on the macabre episode until the panel ordered their exhumation to reveal a contrary evidence that they were all shot at close range.
Now, how many other victims have met a similar fate since that heinous and notorious incident? Don’t even try to hazard a guess. Naturally, the reasonable conclusion is that operatives would become more circumspect and prudent with their behaviours.
At the notorious Awkuzu Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) office, a sign Welcome To Hell, admitted victims to an experience that could not be compared to Nazi Germany. The rest of the grisly story of the atrocities in that hellish entity, is already in the public domain. In the heat of the #EndSARS, the activities of that centre of death, was well highlighted. Meanwhile, the man at the head of it all is still working free.
While the dust of the #EndSARS, was still in the air, the story of Chima Ikwunado, broke out in Port Harcourt. A mechanic, he was arbitrarily arrested, detained, extorted and tortured to death on the orders of the Commander of the E-Crack team, Benson Adetuyi and the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) on the case identified as Inspector Sam, who reportedly wrongly charged him, alongside four others for robbery and cultism.
Indeed, it was a stroke of luck that saved the other four, named as Victor Ogbonna, Osaze Friday, Ifeanyi Osuji and Ifeanyi Onyekwere, his apprentices, who were arrested with him for the simple offence of driving against traffic, but was upgraded by the time it got to the Mile 1 Police Station where they were detained.
The owner of the vehicle, who had been equally detained, had told the officers that it was not stolen, but that was taken for repairs and even when an attempt to coerce him into stating that the car was indeed stolen, he refused and under intense pressure, involved a senior officer in the Nigerian Air Force, who proved that he was the owner of the car.
That was how the bubble burst. Yet, even at this stage, the affected officers did not let go, as they quickly charged the matter to court, still sticking to the allegations of robbery and cult violence, while declaring Chima, who died in their custody out of torture, and from whom they had taken N93,000 found on him to be ‘at large. It was because the magistrate court, apparently seized of the fact of the case as a frame up that released the victims.
Now, like Bolanle Raheem, these were celebrated cases in the Nigerian public. But how far have they gone to whittle down the taste for blood of innocent citizens of Nigeria by the police. How far has it got to curb impunity in them? The answer is there before everybody.
No doubt, the present case is making waves, because of the circumstances. May be because it happened in the open before witnesses or because God simply wanted to expose the culprits and another bizarre episode of the Nigerian Police operations. Else, it would have been successfully defended. The slain lawyer, might also be lucky that she might get justice against her killers, because it did not happen elsewhere.
Did anybody ask any question when a whole busload of human beings, was set ablaze by the same policemen in Imo State? Did everyone not retire to their homes after the police dubbed them members of the Indigenous People of Biafra, and held responsible for the murder of former Presidential aide, Ahmed Gulak?
Yet, are the same Nigerians not witnesses to more people being arrested at different occasions for the same offence of killing the late politician? Only this Tuesday, December 27, another man, said to be a deserted military man, was arrested for killing the same man. So, how many people killed Gulak? Don’t even ask, because doing so could mean trouble, especially for someone in the South East.
Indeed, last year alone, the death through extra-judicial means by those Nigerians employed to protect them was put at over 270. These were of course the documented cases alone. Many are unreported because they are either not discovered or those who should speak for them remain silent for obvious reason(s).
But, what do you say in a country, where there exists a manifest tendency to cover up these crimes in the main, by the authorities either at the level of these killer agencies or at the larger level of government. What has been the response to cases raised by groups like Amnesty International, even to very obvious and well documented cases. What response have families got from the thousands if not millions of petitions lying in different offices at the highest echelon?
Now, there is weeping, wailing and mourning everywhere. While we at WhirlwindNews, join millions of Nigerians in mourning the brutal and needless killing of Bolanle Raheem, the question remains, who is the next victim? Why? If it doesn’t happen today, it will tomorrow. Because in this police killing Bolanle is just a number! That’s the tragedy!
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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