In the Bible, Saul used to be a hunter and persecutor of the Christians until his dramatic encounter on his way to Damascus. After the event of that day he became the hunted and the persecuted. As a persecuted he became Paul.
This piece will take us round some contemporaries in Nigeria. Let us start with Mr. Tafa Balogun, the deposed police Boss. I can remember and you can too, that when he came on board to replace his brother Smith, everybody felt that a Daniel had come to judgment. His anatomic design and towering stature beclouded our senses of assessments. Our man, Balogun telecasted how he would solve the lingering police ailment of indiscipline, corruption and ineptitude. He indeed sent some special squads of police officers to detect and arrest men and officers of the Nigeria police who embarrassed the outfit by habitual forceful collection of moneys from motorists on the high ways.
At first, we saw on N.T.A. news pockets and splashes of police men and officers who eventually became victims of this self inflicted affliction. Very soon after this episode, we saw Balogun himself plotting self destruction following his complicity in the Anambra show of sham in the forceful but abortive removal of Dr. Chris Nwabueze Ngige. It was an event that implicated his A.I.G. zone, 9, Umuahia, Mr. Raphael Ige who was said to have stage managed that political malady and social misfire of a sort. The ill-fated Raphael Ige was leniently retired and he did not only bow out of the black upon black but also exited this earth of a planet by a surprise package of death.
Finally, Balogun bowed out of the police with his men at the rank and file ordering him in hand cuff to and from prison to the court and finally to the prison in an unfashionable embarrassing grand style. Thank God he is alive to tell the tale.
Obasanjo who was once the Head of State and under whose regime the Nigerian students through the conduit of Senator Ahmadu Ali suffered the hell of their lives: Obasanjo who stage managed the rigged elections of 1979 was also himself punished in the dungeon as a big inmate of the prison. At least from 1995 to 1998 when he was released, he would have learnt a lesson that no condition is ever permanent. Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Obasanjo’s former second in Command did not come out of the prison alive. His aged mother and his brothers only recovered his remains to bury especially to satisfy Islamic injunctions. Another in this category is Gen. Donald Oladipo Diya. This is the man that participated actively in the meeting where Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni eight death sentences where happily and joyfully rubber stamped. All other cruel decisions and unjustifiable killings and assassinations of innocent Nigerians were hatched and displayed in a meeting where Diya answered present in Dictator General Sani Abacha’s dark days. However, only God saved his soul from damnation at the various prisons where he was always saying his last prayers not knowing when he would be taken to the gallows. Of course Gen. Victor Malu, the man that reduced Odi to shreds and who boasted before justice Oputa’s panel that he does not regret condemning Diya received his own dose when his village of Zaki Biam fell like Jericho by an order orchestrated by his god-father-Obasanjo. Atiku Abubakar and Audu Ogbe who hunted and helped Baba to Chase away Chief Barnabas Gemade from PDP were the same people crying foul (of victimization and oppression). The once upon a time, Governor General of the Niger Delta who ruled Bayelsa State issuing orders demanding the head of Rt. Hon. Heineken Lokpobiri in the heat of allegations and counter-allegations regarding bombing and blasting of Bayelsa State House Assembly Complex soon became very well hunted by his Boss, OBJ. This is the same story of Governors James Ibori of Delta, Nosakhare Igbinedion of Edo, Chimaroke Nnamani of Enugu, Jolly Nyame of Taraba etc. I guess, this is also the stories of Mohammadu Buhari and even Babangida. When some few years ago, late Chief Chukwenmeka Odumegu Ojukwu, the Biafran War Lord started shouting and crying Wolf, particularly when he was invited by the S.S.S. during the days of OBJ, he forgot how he executed Emmanuel Efeajuna, Victor Banjo and others during his days as a rebel leader in the Eastern Region christened “Biafra” between 1967 and 1970.
In Rivers State today many people who hitherto helped some previous dispensations to make things difficult in the hay days of their political lives are beginning to cry wolf. Have they forgotten when others also cried because of their actions? Why do people forget their pasts in a hurry?
You see, Charles Taylor the former Liberian Tyrant was seen or is still crying saying human right”, “my human right”. How funny are mortals? Al-Mustapha, Suddan Hussein, Idi Amin Dada, Mubutu Sese Seko, Lawrent Kabila, Lawrent Gbagbo, Hosni Mubarak, Muhammed Morsi etc became the hunters after they constituted a predators’ association in the days of their powers.
It therefore becomes crystal clear that there is time for everything in the universe. The Bible skipped to add, “A time to hunt and a time to be hunted, a time to be the killer and a time to the killed”. True, those who lived as though they were kings in the jungle should have known that even the leopard which claims to be so had tales of bruises, injuries and eventually death. The hunter who goes about in the thick forest hunting dangerous animals in their own kingdom sometimes falls victim to hungry carnivorous creatures who are also in the business of hunting. Who then is a Lord? Who then is the most powerful? Who then is a universal talisman? Who is a true king of the jungle? Since politics in the black race has become a hunter’s game, everyone that hunts today should just be ready to be hunted tomorrow or shall we act right and stop the politics of witch-hunting so that we are not hunted.
Remember that the Leopard or the Lion or the Tiger that roars in the jungle hunting fellow animals may not know that it is being hunted by the bullet of the ranger from behind in the same jungle. That is the beauty or mystery of life. ###
Barr. Gideon Kpoobari Girigiri
08036784327
