SIX MONTHS PREGNACY LOST AFTER BRUTAL BEATING BY NAVAL RATINGS

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. 

THE REAL EMANCIPATION OF THE NIGER DELTA

I WOULD lend my unreserved support to any group genuinely engaged in a principled and focused emancipation struggle for the peoples of the Niger Delta. If I perceived this sincerity and clarity of purpose in groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the Niger Delta People Volunteer Force (NDPVF), the Niger Delta Vigilantes (NVD), and the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), I would have urged them to carry on their onslaught until all oil exploration and production activities in the Niger delta are completely grounded and sustained as such. At that stage, the government would have no choice but to begin earnest work on the environmental and developmental problems of the Niger Delta. I believe that now, not later, is the time for our government to pay its debt to the peoples of the Niger Delta. Oloibiri is a testimony to how very deserted the Niger Delta would be once the oil dries up.

But it is now unassailable truth that the existing armed groups in the Niger Delta are neither fighting for the emancipation of the Niger Delta, nor do they have a clear understanding of the sort of emancipation they profess to pursue. The tactics of these groups are well known and many of them may very well be appropriate in a genuine revolutionary struggle or guerrilla warfare for justice. But some, such as the mindless killing of helpless oil workers, kidnapping of children, and terrorizing or harassing residents of the regions they claim to be fighting for, are hardly justifiable. But the biggest telltale of the insincerity of these groups is the contradictions in the lifestyle, positions, and allies of their leaders. The struggle for supremacy between the NDPVF and the NVD was never a liberation struggle. The early political and financial patrons of these groups (such as the Rivers State Government under the leadership of Peter Odili, which was widely alleged to have funded and armed the NVD to battle the NDPVF) did not believe in the liberation of the Niger Delta. Matter of fact, many of these politicians have exacerbated the woes of the Niger Delta. Today, Dokubo Asari, Tom Ateke, Henry Okah, Tamuno Kuna, etc are all multimillionaires. Thanks to revenues from illegal oil sales, ransoms for release of hostages, bribes from oil companies, and the unaccounted-for security votes of our governments. As we now know, the chief ambition of these men is acquisition of personal wealth, political clout, immunity for crime, and godfatherhood for aspiring politicians in the Niger Delta.

The implication of all this is that the the injury and injustice done to the peoples of the Niger Delta have doubled. Not only have they been deprived of the benefits of their natural resources, they now can no more sleep with two eyes closed. Violence upon violence upon violence upon violence has made the region more hellish than Gehenna. In addition to taking the resources of the people without due compensation, in terms of environmental and developmental justice, the government has failed to rid the region of these self-serving, blood-sucking groups. Contrarily, the government has offered an unholy amnesty with daily supplication for these groups to disarm. Yes, there have been some successful military crackdowns, but the general approach of the government has been that of pampering the criminals or surface-scratching the problem. "Egunje" has been and continues to be lavished on leaders of these groups and their members, on traditional rulers and local chiefs, and on middlemen "peace-brokers." Do we need an Einstein to tell us that the last thing the beneficiaries of violence in the region would seek is to stop the flow of this easy money? Anyway, the violence continues and the peoples of the Niger Delta continue to live in constant fear.

While this otiose strategy of supplication and prayers for peace - to the groups and their leaders, to traditional rulers and chiefs, to members of the public, to oil companies, etc. - is being carried on by the government; the very fundamental issue of environmental and developmental justice for the Niger Delta remains as unresolved as it has been since the first barrel of oil was removed from Oloibiri. Now we wonder: our resources have been taken forcefully away from us; our environment continues to be destroyed in a most unconscionable manner; our traditional means of livelihood has been lethally ravished; how about feeling sure that our grandparents could get a peaceful sleep in their shacks or letting our children go to school without fear of some violence befalling them or sitting down at dust with a friend to have a drink peacefully in the open? Can we not also do that?

By Choice Epkekurede
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