Ese, Yinusa and the emirate: The trouble with Nigeria

It is said in the Yoruba country that when your relation feeds on insects and you think that it is not your damn business, just wait until his itchy throat begins rumbling in the dead of the night. So it is with our compatriots in Arewaland who have sired millions of untrained and uneducated children despite been in power for four decades out of Nigeria’s 55 years of Nigeria’s independence.

That army of lumpen youth have now become a problem not to the North but the entire country at large. If they are not Boko Haram bombing anything in sight, they are Fulani herdsmen kidnapping Chief Olu Falae, inflicting machete cuts on him. As they are routing Agatu people in Benue, they are inflicting maximum damage on Lagosians in Mile 12 market in Lagos.

There is hardly any community you go in southern Nigeria today that you don’t see these scruffy youth in droves. By the time you see five Okada riders, chances are that they are three out them.

So it was that Yunusa Dahiru went to Bayelsa State to do Okada business until sometime in August 2015 that he decided to steal 13-year-old Ese Oruru and took her to Kano. He left enough trails for the parents to trace their daughter to Kano where they saw their daughter but were not allowed to move near her because they were “Kafir”.

Before the media could bring Ese’s matter to national consciousness, she has been converted to Islam and put in the family way at 14.

A lot have been written about the Ese saga that I don’t have to repeat. Suffice to say that in this sordid tale is wrapped all that is wrong with Nigeria and why we may not know real peace until we address our foundational issues.

All accounts so far showed that the Emir of Kano was in the full knowledge of the presence of this minor but appeared to be more interested in a soul coerced. The letter he authorised the emirate council to write to the police says it all:

“Sequel to our earlier letter captioned as above, reference no. KEC/ADM/5/V/ dated 26/8/2015, I am further directed to introduce to you a representative of Kano State Sharia’a Commission as well as A’isha Chuwas and her relatives for proper handing over of the said A’isha to the A.I.G Bayelsa State based on Law and Order, purposely to protect her dignity/religion.”

To the Emir, the captive was no longer Ese but “Aisha” and the purpose of directing the girl’s return was “purposely to protect her dignity/religion”(Islam).

He went further to allude to the duality of ideology in Nigeria after the issue got to the public domain. In a bid to save himself the possible embarrassment that the issue was going to cause, the Emir said: “I ordered Ese’ (she is now Ese!) since September 2015 through the Assistant Inspector General of Police Zone 1 (I hope the Oonirisa will one day be giving “orders” to AIG!) but to my surprise, the issue is still hanging in between the Sharia Commission, Hisbah and the police.”

See, see! There is a clash between the Nigeria law enforcement (the police) and the Sharia commission and its police (Hisbah), for seven months’ letter being null and void. Yet, these folks say we can’t have state police around here!

Notice also it was after the public outrage that Emir Sanusi now acknowledged that Ese (“Aisha”) is a minor. Her religion was what mattered all along. Well, Senator Sani Yerima already blackmailed the Senate to reverse itself the day it voted that the age of consent should be 18. The former Zamfara governor who is renowned for marrying minors insisted it was a vote against Islam and he got the Senate to take another vote to say any girl that is married is an adult.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect in the whole saga is the prospect of Ese as a metaphor for the shape of the expansionist project whose seed is already being sewn. An elder statesman in Yorubaland told me 6 out of 10 children being born in a certain flank in Yorubaland are having Fulani blood as they are conceived in rape.

It was amazing that Ese in eight months is already speaking fluent Hausa as if she was born in Kano. This I confirmed from Governor Seriake Dickson of Bayelsa who has interacted with her.

If Ese could be that indoctrinated in eight months, what would be the fate of Chibok girls by now? I hope the girls are found some day but they will definitely be a sorry site to behold given the degeneration in Ese within the period she was abducted from Bayelsa and her rescue.

The children of the north have been unleashed on the rest of us and no one can predict when they will be done.

They have ruined Ese but let us hope her ordeal makes us to realise that we just have to make Nigeria a proper federation where the various civilizations within it can have their full expression without one civilization operating as superior to others and imposing its ways on the rest with impunity.

-…….Who will save us from Vulcas?

The unfortunate death of Minister of State for Labour, Mr. James Ocholi (SAN) and members of his family in a ghastly motor accident recently should jolt us to a neglected aspect of road safety in our country.

Reports have indicated that the fatal accident was caused by a burst tyre. Hundreds of deaths happen on our roads every now and then arising from burst tyre and we are not paying much attention to this development.

Apart from the use of low quality tyre occasioned by the harsh economic climate in our country, there is the avalanche of poorly trained and Ill-equipped tyre repairers popularly called Vulcanizers on every street corner in our country. They are called “Vulcas”. They are mostly illiterates who cannot read what pressure specifications are prescribed for each vehicle by manufacturers. They just inflate anyhow. They use gauges that are malfunctioning most of the time. I recall one of them once inflated a tyre for me and said it was 40. I felt there that the tubular air container was not symmetrical and had to check again when I got to standard Vulcanizer. Lo and behold, the tyre pressure was 70!

The road safety must quickly pay attention to this sector and enforce standards. They have to train these vulcanizers and ensure that only certified ones are allowed to operate. They must also ensure that they are made to acquire standard gauges at affordable price.

We can save many deaths on our roads!