By Owei Lakemfa

THE tunes are familiar. Across our beautiful motherland, rascals are beating the drums of hooliganism and gangsterism. The Armed Forces which is adept at this were again asked to pay an exemplary fine for brutality.

This time they shifted their criminality down South where the crime of their  victim, Joseph Etene was  for asking an innocuous question. The law lecturer at the gate of the Navy Barracks, Atimbo, Calabar  asked a Naval rating if guests at an expected wedding would be permitted to pack their cars along the road. The rating perhaps felt insulted that a bloody civilian had the nerve to ask him a stupid question right at the barracks gate, dragged the victim down from his car, hit him with the butt of his gun.

Etene passed out, but that was not the end of his ordeal; other Naval personnel poured out to hit and whip him with belts. When other citizens expressed fears that Etene might be killed, they were also attacked by the ‘gallant’ men of the disciplined forces. Justice Ademola Adetokunbo of the Federal High Court, Calabar in awarding  N150 million damages to Etene  lamented that Nigerians are gradually becoming endangered species in their own country.

Eseme Eyibo, the spokesperson of the Bankole majority in the House of Representatives who on June 2 physically battered some of their fellow Honourables before suspending them, was given a vicious hook below the judicial belt by Distinguished Senator  Hassan Muhammed Gusau from Zamfara State. Eyibo had in 2007 bought a property in Abuja for N100 million and gotten the certificate of occupancy.

The senator decided to repurchase the house but Eyibo refused.  So in a commando style, Senator Gusau on February 15, 2008 invaded the property  with armed policemen, some young men and a bailiff. They brandished  an Upper Sharia Court, Hadejia, Jigawa State writ of possession written in Hausa. Eyibo again resisted and headed for the Abuja High Court where the cerebral Justice Peter Affen  ruled that there was no court judgement anywhere that warrants Eyibo to yield the possession of his property.

Then  Gusau headed for the Abuja Federal High Court where he got Justice Othman A. Musa to practically sit on appeal on the judgement of his fellow judge. With an ex parte motion from Justice Musa, Gusau forcibly ejected Eyibo. Justice Musa on June 29, reversed himself, but the deed had been done. Rascals had once again devoured a victim.

Will Gusau be punished for his advertised misdeeds? Quite unlikely. His fellow Senator, Sani Ahmed Yerima who violated the country’s law by marrying an under-age child is strutting around a free man. The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons   had raised hopes that Yerima would at least be charged; it  claimed that immigration records confirm the new bride to be less than  14 years. But the same agency now throws up its arms in apparent surrender. The impression is that we are in a country where anything goes.

But House Speaker,  Dimeji Bankole, is anxious that such an impression should not be made, at least on children. So after  the House he so ably leads had liberally beaten up some members in front of camera and children who were visitors to the Assembly, he visited the school children. I Was moved to see Bankole apologising to the students of City Royal Secondary School, Nyanya, Abuja  for the hooliganism put up by the Honourables.

But my worries remain; it was a brawl planned and foretold. Eyibo, the House spokesman, had bragged in the media that the Bankole group would on that day show the Dino Melaye camp who are the boys and who are the men in the House. So why didn’t anybody in the National Assembly ask that the children’s excursion visit to the House be postponed  given the fact that the Honourables had settled for a fight that day? Whatever the case, Bankole’s visit was some comfort, but what kind of visitation can he do to children across the country who watched the show of shame on network television? The antidote is for our legislators to repent of their ways and allow debate on the floor no matter how contentious. They should be representative of  most Nigerians behaviour;  yes, we can be   quite argumentative and heady, but we are not street rascals who settle matters only with our fists or by brutalizing our opponents.

Let me quickly concede that the National Assembly has not degenerated to the level of politics in parts of the country where the penalty for opposition  or even the intention to enter a political contest is death. Mr Ini Ekong Udonwa had returned home to Akwa Ibom to seek the gubernatorial ticket of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

For his effrontery, his mother, Lady Philomena Udonwa was kidnapped. The condition for her release was that the family should declare the aspirant dead. When after two months the family refused, she was murdered. The message was clear; the aspirant fled not just the state but the country! In the same state, assassins went to church not to worship, but to take the life of former PDP Assistant  Secretary for the South-South, Mr Paul Inyang.

The victim ran to his car,  drew a gun and shot one of his attackers, the other gang members sent him to heaven in a hail of bullets. With the approach of the 2011 elections, matters are likely to degenerate further. The signs are everywhere, the most telling being the existence of two deputy governors in Bauchi State,   Mohammed Garba Gadi  reinstated by the courts, and Babayo Gamawa  recognised by His Excellency, Alhaji Isa Yuguda, the Executive Governor.

The  private  war of the Orjis in Abia State also promises to degenerate into violence. The contrived crises in the country have nothing to do with principles, ideology or service to the people; they are simply wars to determine who would have greater access to the wealth of the country. Must we be led by such people?