The brutal beating of Mrs. Obase Mordi and her brother by naval
ratings as reported in the Punch Newspaper on Monday 5 September 2011 is
nothing to be written home about. All because, the lady sought to trace the
address of a naval officer’s wife that mistakenly took her luggage in a transit
bus. The lady and her brother were
beaten black and blue in their attempt to locate the navy offcer’s wife’s
quarters through the navy officers stationed at the entrance to the navy
barracks in Calabar despite the fact that the lady informed the officers that
she was pregnant.
Although the lady never said she said anything nasty to the
man at the gate in her frustrated attempt to get her missing luggage. According
to the newspaper report, the first officer, Mrs Mordi met at the gate was very
polite but the officer beside him was very rude and refused to help as regard
tracing the naval officer’s wife with her luggage. Mrs. Mordi said as she approached
another officer coming towards the gate to help with locating her missing
luggage, the uncooperative naval officer, Bassey by name bounced on her. As
Mrs. Mordi’s brother held the naval officer’s wrist, begging him to stop
beating the sister because she was pregnant, naval officer, left the sister and
started beating the brother mercilessly despite the fact that he was informed
that the man is sickle cell patient. Officers at the entrance to the barracks
joined Bassey in beating the duo, after which they were handcuffed and taken to
a nearby police station to be locked inside the cell.
Even if Mrs. Mordi had snapped at Bassey, the barbaric
treatment of the lady and her brother were not at all commensurate to whatever
she could have said to the officer.
I wonder what happened to the case of the naval senior
officer who shut a gun at an Okada man (a LASU undergraduate who does the Okada
business to sponsor himself at school) because he hit his car with his Okada.
I hope the huge amount of money awarded by the court as
damages in favour of the lady that was brutalised by a naval officer sometime
last year was actually obtained from the officer.
Am racking my brain to think of what other detering action
should be taken against men in the Nigerian force who think because they are
enlisted in the force they are more superior to non uniformed men which made up
a larger part of the country they took an oath of office to protect.
Worse to be imagined are those officers that take delight at
dehumanising women. I wonder if those officers really had mothers and not that
they dropped from the sky. Don’t they have wives and children – daughters at
home. Am told an average officer in the lower rank in the Nigerian force get new
wives at every town, village and city he is posted. At every new post, he
forgets the wife and children he left behind, preparing to get another wife and
of cause breed more children at the new place, he is posted. This makes him
vulnerable to impregnating his own daughter in the course of changing women at
every new town he is posted to.
Should the careless life he lives be made to endanger the
lives of citizens for which he is paid to protect? No!
I think the Nigerian forcemen should be particularly trained
to handle with civilian women (especially non offenders) with utmost respect
and dignity.
Female officers should also be stationed at entrances to
barracks just like their male counterparts to attend to female visitors to the
barracks.
If a female naval officer was present at the scene of the
event, she would most probably have saved the situation.
Am sincerely disappointed at the response of the Public Relation
Officer of the State Naval Command, Lt. Cmdr. Way Olabisi, who said he expected
Mrs Mordi to have reported the incident straight away to a nearby naval office.
How could the poor lady be convinced that she would not received a similar
treatment (if not worse), from any other naval office she goes to report the
incident? The incident must have made her devastated, timid and so confused
that going straight away to a nearby naval office would not have appeared a
safe thing to do.
Bassey and the other naval officers maltreated Mrs Mordi and
her brother, should be brought to book. A commensurate purnishment (such as
losing their jobs) should be meted out to them.
