bY Kola Animasaun
– Let the poor help themselves
In my Constituency for State Assembly, at the last count, there are 32 aspirants for Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN.  There will be a few more for People’s Democratic Party, PDP and the others.  Of course, posters have manifested – all saying the things they will do if they are voted to power.  They don’t always do.

Do they?

Of course, they promised heaven and earth.  My representative at the House of Representatives also is bent to go there for the third time.  He would have been going for 12 straight years.

“Amazing”, cars have manifested.  They do not have to be new.  Any ‘tokunbo’ will do.  The honourable has promised more goodies.

He did not do remarkable things first term, when the second term came he started to run all over the place.  Until Obasanjo’s third term overcame him.  It was said he did not collect the Obasanjo largesse of N50 million.  He used that as the bargain chip.  The Action Congress (interpose Asiwaju) gave him and others safe passage in his place to Abuja.

We did not have the opportunity to ask the honourable many questions.  Take for instance, how many motions the honourable helped to pass; how many constituency projects the honourable attracted to the Constituency; how many debates he contributed to in the entire sessions.  How much our honourable contributed to our education; our roads and other social amenities, I do not know.  It would have not amounted to much.

Our honourable has wasted eight years of our lives and would we allow him to waste another of our four years?

If care is not taken, he will take many more of our years.  Because, we are greedy and could not take care of ourselves.  My honourable and his ilk would by subterfuge give a penny to take a pound.  They will use them as thugs and the people will sing and dance for those who would not care whether they live or die. They have their shelf live: for the period of the election and their usefulness will be gone.

I would have loved that they will listen.  But they cannot.  And I mean the poor and the down-and-out.  They contended to eke pittance.  Who will help them?  That is why for a political position, thousands of them queue out for it.  And the thugs, the kidnappers and the killers are not excessively concerned with life; they are cruel and violent.

The rich will not help them out; it is not in their interest.

…Death for kidnappers
Nigerians have backed the death penalty for kidnappers.  That was the headline of newspapers.  And I thought those who caused us excess agro will have it.  Like cocaine carriers; like kidnappers; like stealers from our treasuries; like killers.

But I was surprised that those who rate lowly on the scale of felonies were the ones on whom we are wasting out breath.

House Committees on Judiciary, Justice, Human Rights and Police Affairs at the National Assembly agreed there was need for stiffer penalties.

In a Bill entitled: “An Act to prohibit hostage taking, prescribe punishment for its contravention and other matters relating thereof”, it stipulates life imprisonment for anyone who kidnaps and 10 years jail term with an option of fine for anyone who attempts to kidnap any person.

That was a watered down version, which I expected.  Friday Itulah, Samson Osagie and Dickson Henry Seriake; all of them sponsored the Bill.  But in no place, either in the Bill or in the contributions, did they mention extreme punishment.

China will execute anyone who causes economic adversity, the type visited on our economic system in recent times.  No one gives any felon a slap on the wrist for stealing billions of Naira.  Kidnapping attracts death just like murder will merit an execution.Bala Ibn Na’Allah, Chairman, House Committee on Judiciary, stated that if Nigerians “insisted that stiffer penalties be meted out to kidnappers and hostage takers,” then so be it.  But the Bill has not met the aspiration of some Nigerians.