Saraki and the persecution BullS**t By Tunde Asaju

The first time I was introduced to the word persecution, it was at a religious setting. A just man who went about doing good was persecuted and exchanged for an armed robber. The unwashed masses hardly know what is good for them. They are experts in deadening their conscience with noise. If their power had been properly targeted at their oppressors, a country like Naija would have been the true paradise it is endowed to be.
But no, we are like a movie clip paused for eternity in want, bathed in penury and baptized in underdevelopment. The people have no idea what is good for them; they sometimes make a false good move, but hardly from deep introspection. Their notion of justice is as perverse as the judgments handed down in the kangaroo courts that sometimes try their ilk.
Given this background, it is very easy to oppress the people and not only to get away with it, but to fool them into believing that the oppressor is acting in the masses best interest. A few weeks ago, I read a painful story of a young man clobbered to death by an angry mob after he and others allegedly stole a pot of soup in broad daylight. The murder took place on a Sunday in downtown Calabar where a governor claims he is spending his own money to run a state. If that governor, and any of the others ruining the state were to pass the same street, he would be hailed with shouts of Hosanna.
Over the weekend in Abejukolo in forgotten Kogi State, four young men accused of theft met a similar fate. They were hacked to death by a vigilante group. In fact, when a friend of mine posted the horror with gusto on his social media timeline, he got nods of approval and a few sanctimonious scriptural quotes reminding us of the wages of sin. This is how we roll in hoi polloidom.
Our sense of morality however changes when the accused is an oppressor who stole his state or an institution blind and bought for himself the capacity to twist and bend both the law and the justice system. We, the so-called oppressed are not united in the condemnation of their acts that impoverishes us – no. We dig deep, into our ethnic recesses, religious recesses, political recesses to pull out the joker to bail them out. Occasions like that reminds us of the injustice of justice and the partiality of penance.
Those whose blows killed the soup and transformer thieves would be so quick to return to their shrine to worship their pastors who feed them more motivational speeches that they do the gospel just to help them part with the little in our pockets. These motivational speakers sprinkle the holy water of forgiveness on the same bozzos who steal us blind and pay huge tithes and offerings. They build schools that charge fees that exclude poor members’ children and sprinkle a few score scholarships, which make members bow down and worship them as icons of philanthropy. When a member attempts to point this out, the worshipers shout that the devil has taken their soul and organize prayer exorcism sessions; failure, which they read out the new catechism – touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm.
These motivational priests are outdoing each other in flying the latest jets, their congregation are squealing – my prophet’s jet is bigger than yours. These merchants of miracles have access to the best doctors offering pro-bono home delivery service, but the congregation has to pay through their noses for theirs or seek the fake miracles that dispatch them to the world beyond. Here’s my advice – don’t die in your ignorance and don’t take your talents to heaven when its needed on earth.
So, what is the hoopla about the presumed persecution of Bukola Saraki? As Okadigbo would say, he is just a mass of protoplasm. What is wrong with selective justice in the fight against corruption, it has to start from somewhere. Every thief may have his day but there is a day of reckoning for the owner. There’s nothing wrong with siding with your friends when they are in trouble, it’s a mark of loyalty, but loyalty must not be applied blindly. There are leaders past and present who fear neither persecution nor prosecution because they have no skeletons in their cupboards. Those involved in shady deals must be prepared to do hard time. Those who are not guilty, need not hide from justice? The last time I checked, justice is terror only to the guilty. Let those with facts on the shady deals of others come forward with their facts or forever hold their peace. The BS about this ordeal is time wasting and seriously annoying.

Email: tundeasaju@yahoo.co.uk

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