THE POLICE SHOULD BE BANNED!

 

 

As much as it has been medically proven that cigarette smoking is dangerous to health, one has not heard that countries where cigarette companies exist have established a law to ban their continued existence.  

 

  

Now compare the above scenario to that of a total ban on commercial motorcycles in some states of Nigeria, most recently in Delta state, effective 1^st October, where insecurity is the major excuse for this ban.

 

 

 

The business of commercial motorcycles was as a result of failed infrastructural plan by the government to march population growth with commiserating transportation.  As a result of the entrepreneurial ingenuity of Nigerians to survive harsh economic conditions, an offshoot of bad governance, commercial motorcycle transport became an industry employing so many and sustaining so many homes.

 

 

 

In Nigeria, leaders of the nation and states within the nation never tire to convince citizens of the need to travel to foreign lands and persuade investors to come to the country and establish industries, yet they don’t hesitate to kill local industries like commercial motorcycle transport.  Should the law be used to stop the activities of motorcycle transportation or should the government use a thriving economy as a more potential tool?

 

 

 

“Molues” are history in Lagos because the state government has an efficient alternative luxury bus transport.  So, I'm compelled to ask how much deliberation and consultation is done before this kind of action is proposed and accepted.  Is it that when they hear something bad about commercial motorcyclists, they go: “if these people are not banned this will not stop,” and then they smile to themselves and say “see how smart I am?” 

 

 

The government hides it incompetence and claims that commercial motorcycle operators are a security risk.  The government proposes to kill an industry it did not establish or sustain so that it can tell the people that without this industry they can sleep better.

 

 

But from all the reports that I have read about most of the kidnappings that took place in Delta state, cars, not motorcycles were used. And earlier this year a Chief Superintendent of Police in charge of the anti-kidnap squad in Delta state was suspected to be in league with the criminals he was supposed to be fighting.      

So, I move the motion to have cars and the police banned. 

 

 

 

 

So, see how smart that makes me?

SYRIAN WAR: THE MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE

 

 

 

Class, welcome to the study of another self propagated theory: THE MONOPOLY OF VIOLENCE

 

 

 

 

 

Conflict in human affairs is inevitable and over time it has remained a cheap excuse for the perpetration of violence.

 

 

 

According to Isaac Asimov, “violence is the last refuge of the incompetent,” a refuge easily made rubbles that the perpetrator of violence would have to accept as home. 

 

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “the Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles." Everyday picture of everyday people, especially people with some abstract measure of power.  True attributes of bullies. 

 

 

 

But make no mistake to assume that bullies alone have in their possession the recipe for violence.  For as an African adage goes, the fact that you lit a fire does not mean that the fire cannot burn you.  It is instinctively human to defend oneself.  Thus, violence cannot be monopolized because the longer you hold a man down the longer you stay down with him.

 

 

 

Syria was once a nation inhabited by a people whose only weapon in opposition to their leader, in the past, was their voice.  Today, these people own guns, bombs and an uprising that will not yield to intimidation. 

 

 

 

If violence could be monopolized, the Syrian President would definitely have become a cheap imitation of a self assumed true monopolist of violence like Adolf Hitler.

 

 

 

The whole essence of this study?

 

 

 

 

According to E. F. Schumacher, “any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

Class dismissed!   

 

 

MEMO TO LAGOS:

 JUSTICE IS A WOMAN

 

 

 

 

Again, my theory states that whatever has advantages does accommodate its own measure of disadvantages.  This time around, I present the case study of the state of Lagos, Nigeria with its Child Right law.  Although I should say this is one case where the disadvantage totally outnumbers the advantage.

 

 

This law as advertised by the state government heralds that parents must make their children have primary school education because that level of education is now free in the state. 

And where parents rather than send their wards to school choose to send them to the streets to hawk wares that such parent would be made to dance to the music of the law which comes in the tune of a N200,000 (Two Hundred Thousand Naira) fine or the option of spending time in prison.  

Advantage: every child in the state has access to free primary education.

Disadvantage”S” (yes, disadvantage with a capital “S” at the end): 

 

*How free is free primary education when teachers have their list of regular unofficial demands from these pupils?  After all, these teachers enjoy boasting that if you complain that education is expensive why not try ignorance.

 

 

*Catch a parent or parents that break the law, put them in prison, who caters for the children that the government so eagerly wants to provide free education for?  Not to talk of the fact that the prisons are further congested with a law that should have a better punitive measure.

 

 

*Is it a parent that cannot pay for his / her family’s daily feeding of not up to a thousand Naira that would be able to pay the sum of N200,000 (Two hundred thousand Naira) fine?

*Are these punitive measures not so unrealistic that it makes mockery of the law?

*Where the law is mocked based on the fact that its punitive measure is outrageous, is it sustainable?

 

 

*And where the economy does not improve to cater for those below the middle class is it the free books that the kids get at school that they will eat when they get home?

 

 

 

 

 

*One more question, what law does the government have against a child that chooses not to want to stay in class for a free primary education?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, while I acknowledge that parents that send their wards hawking wares to the streets put them in harm’s way, it does not take away the fact that the law does not have a human face real enough to dwell in the society of humans living in the state.

 

 

 

 

And the last time I checked, Justice is still a woman with a human face.

 

 

 

 

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE POEM

CEASE FIRE!

 How do we find the roadmap

When we keep shifting the goal mark

For we are always at the same crossroads

No matter how hard we trudge across roads

The road to Peace seems to always bring wars

Any path of the crossroads is the same as the other was

“There’s no war that will end all wars”

Haruki tells in Kafka on the shore

So back at the crossroads we come again not sure

Even when we do find the map

We see the sign and give it a tap

But our attempt to interpret fails

Words of Margaret Atwood weigh heavy on scales

“War is what happens when language fails”

 “The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick spelling out the cost

Of mapping out peace with the sound of gun shots

 

As “war does not determine who is right, only who is left”

No question about how Bertrand Russell felt

Peace does not have to tread the path of war

For love is a natural resource so raw

That man can make the world a cure

And deny Plato of his claim about war

That “only the dead have seen the end of war”

“There are causes worth dying for

But none worth killing for”

Albert Camus’ spoken proof that will not tire

To demand that the world must cease fire!

 
 









BY ALEX

BEWARE OF DOGS!

 

It is a personal theory that whatever has an advantage always accommodates it own disadvantage.

 

 

 

 

In some cases, the advantage nullifies the disadvantage while in other case the reverse is the case. 

 

Take the case of the child that is allowed by the parents to be rude towards a neighbor that is considered a mutual family enemy.  This definitely comes with a truck load of advantages.  But hardly do the parents realize that the disadvantages are delivered in more than one truck load.

 

Let me explain.  Being rude is a behavior where encouraged could become a habit.  So, a child being rude to a neighbor is just a temporary attitude on display when the neighbor is available for target practice.  But at some point, that temporary attitude might become a permanent habit that the parents would have to live with all their lives.    

 

Now liken the above analogy to the activities of extremist religious groups in northern Nigeria, originally sponsored by certain leaders of states in that part of the Nigerian nation, under the guise to establish the practice of Sharia law.  I can bet that never in the confines of their religiously zealous reasoning did these masterminds of unsubstantiated hate ever thought that:

* wireless telephone companies’ masts and fiber cables would be destroyed in their bid to stop the security forces from tracking their moves which invariably hampers the extremist group’s communication needs (makes me wonder if none of them ever watched Jack Bauer in "24" handle this kind of problem);

*that alongside churches, mosques would be burned;

*that men, women and children, irrespective of religious beliefs would be killed;

*that indigenes of the state occupying public offices like a nothern state justice commissioner would be butchered by the same extremists, leaving us to wonder who will help implement the Sharia law;

*that night, social and business activities would be hampered by curfews;

*and that the same leaders of the north would declare to the world that their economy is dying without commensurate audacity to still tell the world that businesses are closing up due to fear of insecurity of which they are sponsors.  

 

 

 

And as you must know, the list is not exhaustive.   

 

In other words, if all you train your dog to do is bite! Dog! Bite!  Then it is advised to have some dog bite medications available in your first aid box.  Not because of the victims your dog might make of passers-by but very much because some day you are going to become a delicious menu to be savored by your own dog to which the shout of “down! Dog! Down!” would practically sound like “French” to an “English” barking dog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, BEWARE OF DOGS!