Before
I put anyone on blast, which is by no means my intention here, I feel the need
to share with you a little story of recent events. When the Egyptian military
ousted Morsi, I was happy. I wasn’t happy because I understood why he was
ousted or why some Egyptians wanted him out. I was happy because I admired the
Egyptians’ gusto and not to mention I have Egyptian friends who were extremely
happy. What’s happier than seeing your friends happy, right? But I was blind
and that’s not to say some of these people didn’t have reasons to dislike
Morsi’s administration, but I was blind to the fact that what happened in Egypt
was an outright coup. I suppose I lied to myself that it was alright, since the
people were happy. It turns out it was only half the people that were happy,
unlike the popular ousting of Mubarak, where very few people wanted him around
and looking at the recent happenings in Egypt’s politics, I wonder if this
wasn’t a bigger grand scheme that no one might end up liking in the end, which
brings me to the cases of Al-Mustapha and George Zimmerman and to the point of
being objective, rather than sentimental as I clearly was!
Charity starts at home, so I’ll start
with the acquittal of Major Hamza Al-Mustapha. So unless you’ve been living
under a rock or know nothing about Nigeria, Al-Mustapha, the man charged with
the murder of Kudirat Abiola (the wife of late politician M.K.O Abiola) has
been freed after what is it, 14/15 years? For the record, Al-Mustapha DID NOT
pull the trigger. No, that was Sgt. Rogers who has since been freed and who
claimed he believed he was acting in the good of the nation which he served as
a soldier. Al-Mustapha was the man who ordered the hit. Since his then oga at
the top, Abacha has been no more for over a decade now, Al-Mustapha is the one
on trial and some may say rightfully so.
Al-Mustapha’s release has caused mixed
reactions, some justifiable, some outright sentimental. To make it clear, let
me state where I stand. Al-Mustapha is NO HERO, however just like his admirable
personality won over the people who initially attended the Oputa panel to jeer
and ridicule him, the length of his trial for the good part of over a decade
has gained him lots of sympathy. The case for justice against Al-Mustapha
became one of injustice and now most of us are just glad it’s over, whether or
not we like the man. Some may celebrate him as a Northern hero, but there’s
nothing heroic in my view of his actions or of him being from the North. Some
may say justice was denied, but holding him on trial for so long became an
injustice of its own and in the end he won. I won’t get into the theories of
the timing of his release, because that would be another headache. Al-Mustapha
will still be an enigmatic and admirable figure who will be equally loved and
loathed in equal measure for the rest of his life; that is something he will
live with. His release won’t bring back Kudirat, but alas it is over. No more
wondering what will become of him. He is free and so is our collective anxiety,
let us move on.
Let us move on to a case we have
somehow made our own in a country where for the past few years people have been
dropping like flies, while we wish to do nothing more than turn our heads in
the opposite direction and carry other people’s cases. We turn to the case of
one Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old Florida teenage shot dead by a supposed
neighbourhood vigilante named George Zimmerman in the good old U.S of A, which
seems to have a legal system some of us are now realizing isn’t as great as we
might have made it out to be, but we won’t be sentimental here.
Whether or not Zimmerman was acting on
the basis of a neighbourhood watch is very much beside the point now. Years ago,
the TV drama, Boston Legal aired an
episode that had an eerie prediction of the Trayvon Martin case, a black man
was arrested for walking into a gated community. The police officer who
arrested him did so because he thought he was a perpetrator. His reason? The
Black man didn’t look like anybody from the neighbourhood. Alan Shore defended
the Black man, rightfully citing race as an injustice towards his client and
won largely based on that, claiming there was nothing wrong with a Black man
walking into a gated community and one day wishing to be able to live in one of
the fancy houses.
The Zimmerman case with its almost
similar circumstances is very different. Very, very different. For starters,
one of the people involved is dead. Trayvon is not here to speak for himself.
Second of all, Zimmerman is not a police officer to even have the law on his
side based on his occupation. Third and most important of all, there were no
eye witnesses and even the people who made phone calls to 911 during the
altercation can’t give concrete evidence as to what really happened. Is it sad
that Trayvon got shot? Absolutely! I wouldn’t wish this on any parent. Was the
court wrong in acquitting Zimmerman? To be honest, NO! In a proper trial and I
do believe Zimmerman got as fair a trial as he could, but in a proper proper trial Zimmerman would at least have
been charged with manslaughter and NOT murder (as some people are calling for).
But the trial from all indication was as fair as it could be and let’s remember
we are talking about the Florida legal system that not only allows people to
carry guns as does pretty much the rest of the United States, but allows people
to act in the form of vigilantes, which Zimmerman claims he was doing. We don’t
know what really happened between Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman, like I said one
party is dead and that leaves us to go with the word of the other.
Now some people might say I’m harsh
and say if Trayvon was White it would be different. Yes, it would. For
starters, race may not be brought up had he been White but he wasn’t, he was
Black and not only did race become an issue, it seemed some of us MADE IT the
only issue! If Trayvon was White, the outcome may have been different, but
who’s to say Zimmerman still would not have cocked his gun at him. To further
explain my point, I give you the words of Brian Tannenbaum, a criminal and Bar
Defense lawyer in Miami, Florida who’s been practicing since 1995 and we can
all agree has a better understanding of the system there than those of us
crying foul here in Nigeria on twitter and elsewhere. Note the emphasis is all
mine:
“I think it’s terrible that George
Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin. That’s a TRADEGY. I don’t think he had to shoot
him, and had one or two things been different (he didn’t get out his car,
didn’t have a gun, on and on), we wouldn’t be here. I keep hearing Trayvon
Martin would have killed George Zimmerman, I don’t think so, but I WASN’T
THERE. YOU WEREN’T THERE EITHER! You don’t know what happened exactly. As much
as you want to believe you were there and know what happened, exactly, you
weren’t, and you don’t. Not knowing exactly what happened requires a NOT GUILTY
verdict, no matter how angry or outraged you are.”
He further points out, “The jury
didn’t free Zimmerman because they thought he was a good guy or because they
weren’t sad that a young boy was killed (jurors were rumored to be crying
during the state’s rebuttal), they found him not guilty because the facts and
the law required them to do so.” Shekinan!
If you should be angry at anyone, be
angry at the State and or the federal system that allows people to carry guns
and play superheroes when they think they’re in the right before we descend on
Zimmerman. Another point Tannenbaum makes, “Juries don’t make decisions because
they are mad, sad, angry, or feel bad for someone’s parents… You don’t think
it’s right that he (Zimmerman) killed Trayvon Martin, but that’s not what the
law says in Florida where we like guns more than we like people. You have a
problem with that, do something to change the law…”
You couldn’t shoot a teenager in Nigeria
for walking into your neighbourhood just like that, because our system doesn’t
allow any Tom, Dick and Harry to own a gun. You’d have to be a man of uniform
to even own one in the first place. Zimmerman got acquitted because his is a
land where he was right to have a hand gun and was right to, in his words act
in self defense. There’s nothing we can do about that either… except again,
change the law! I rest my case!
