FROM AL-MUSTAPHA TO ZIMMERMAN: A CASE AGAINST OUR SENTIMENTS

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!

ABUJA'S JUVENILE DILEMMA

As a city, Abuja lacks a lot of things. The most glaring perhaps and most felt is a proper put together transportation system, but look further beyond the cracks or rather further into them and you’ll realize Abuja also has some very big social issues. The most famous (and most exploited by the media) is prostitution, but nearly all prostitution cases in the city involve adults, if not all. One group that often gets forgotten about are the little kids you see around from time to time begging and attempting to wash your windshield in the midst of traffic much to your dismay. Now not all of these children are homeless per se, but it’s safe to assume nearly all of them are far from their parents and probably live with one Mallam or Guardian who probably takes most of their alms money as compensation for housing them in the big city.

          

Technically speaking, these kids can and should be considered juveniles (or delinquents, since we’re talking about people who haven’t committed serious crimes). For starters they aren’t where the typical child should be, which is at school, but neither are half the hawkers in Nigeria you say. I know, but let’s concentrate on those we know aren’t coming from their family home in one of the city’s neighbouring satellite towns to sell pure water or whatever and return to the comfort of a house. I am referring to those who literally don’t have anyone in the city, but some elderly gentleman to care for them. Before we ask the stereotypical, “What is the F.C.T doing about this?” question, let’s consider the cultural/moral dilemma of our society.

          

For starters, on average, Nigerians consider homeless people to be those who are generally certified by society (by the public, not health institutions) as mad and who search through dustbins for food and not necessarily those who sleep under bridges, those are called Area boys and drug addicts, not the homeless under the Nigerian term. Hence, it becomes hard to convince the general public that these children should be considered juveniles and sometimes homeless, when after all we all assume they live with an apparent caretaker and seemingly haven’t broken any law. Also some of these children are sent to these homes with the full consent of their parents with the excuse or rather, the reason being to study the Quran as if the world ran out of Quranic tutors that we now have to take a pilgrimage to learn it. So you mean to tell me in Kano with all its history of learning, there are no Quranic tutors that we now have to send kids to places like Minna with only a fraction of Kano’s learning history? So you now see, we do not only have a century old cultural dilemma, we have one that is occasionally dressed in religion and you can understand how asking the F.C.T to act on this issue is easier said than done. But we also can’t just do nothing.

           

Instead of the bus load of men they send to catch women old enough to decide whether they should be on the street or not, how about diverting some of that force and energy into at least, first finding out where must of these boys are housed and in what conditions they are living in. Before someone from the F.C.D.A responds to this, let me say I understand that the sight of anyone from authority will naturally scare these kids to not reveal anything that may eventually help in their future well-being. So the scare tactic has to take a backseat. Last I checked it technically isn’t illegal for the government to snoop around, providing of course its outcome is for the good of the public… and also the public doesn’t know.

           

Second, can the F.C.T provide a boarding house for these kids if they are discovered to have no actual home? Other questions arise such as how well these boarding houses will be managed by the F.C.T. I know for sure from a friend of mine, who frequents orphanages that the F.C.T has some of the most cared for orphan homes, but these are mostly private-run. You’d expect of course something run by the government to go smoothly, but we all know this isn’t the case.

          

Whatever the outcome, Abuja has a lot of issues and perhaps none more pressing than the social ones.

SO… WHO’S DOING ANYTHING ABOUT POLICE COLLEGE?

Let me paint you a scenario and do feel free to raise your hands if you see where this is going. An incident happens, that's one, that causes outrage, that's two, the people complain all over the news, facebook, twitter, you name it, three, the government responds with a half-ass comment or maybe sets up a committee, if we’re lucky the president visits, four, a week or two, maybe a month, we forget, five! If you raised your hand before reaching five, you deserve your Nigerian passport. You’ve lived here long enough.

           

While the country went on its usual outcry of emotions over the state of the nation’s police college, not one public figure or the many millions on social media seemed to have offered a proper solution. We all mentioned how much money the ministry got, how the government has failed, the government in turn turned it into a show of eye service, the president showed up on his way to Togo or somewhere, a committee was set up and… well, that’s where the story ends apparently, for now. As of February 1^st as reported in The Vanguard, the inspector general of police Mohammed Abubakar has said renovation would begin once the funds come in… as of now, there’s no mention whether the funds have come in or not, not that I expect the Nigerian Police to shout it to the world if it indeed it has, but my point is it hasn’t been made clear what kind of renovations will take place. If I may, I would like to offer some suggestions.

          

For starters get better bunk beds, maybe ones made of good wood and not metal. Two, stop turning halls into bedrooms, this isn’t NYSC camp. I wonder why we have a mentality of trying to fit 150 people into one room, the fear of catching something from someone should be scary enough. Three of course is to get them a better dietary plan. One fish head for 50 people is pathetic in a country that can afford to dole out N5m to its conquering football players, but can’t feed the people they expect to protect them when next we decided to riot against the system (I’m just saying). Four, if feeding the police cadets is going to be a problem, increase their daily allowance from N150 to N1, 500. That would come to every cadet being given N45, 000 a month. That’s not much is it?!

           

Also the duration of training for the police cadets is 18 months; I quite like the Abu Dhabi model, where police cadets train for four years, before being full-time police officers. Why do I like this model? Because it makes more sense and can reduce unemployment. For starters the four years are divided thus: Year one is for theoretical work only, classroom stuff; the second year is the start of field work; years three and four are for psycho-analysis of criminals and criminal situations (we have plenty of those in Nigeria). Why do I think the four-year model can help reduce unemployment? Simple, if the cadets are given the option of leaving at any point of their four-year course, only the strong and well-intended will see it through, but those looking for some benefit from the government (the proposed N45, 000 a month) will join for about a year or two. Of course there has to be a limit to the number of applicants accepted. But this is Nigeria, I understand four years might seem absurd, so let’s make it two years from the present 18 months, because anyone can tell our officers are not well trained and seem to come out half-baked.

           
Well those are my suggestions to solving the police college dilemma and by extension police training. I don’t complain only, I offer solutions.

THE DEATH OF FREELANCE ADVERTISING IN NIGERIAN NEWSPAPERS?!

Have you opened a Nigerian newspaper recently? If you have, you will notice the two things most readers complain about aside from the numerous grammatical errors you’ll have fun picking out. The number one complaint is that all the stories from paper to paper tend to be the same with slight variations. The second complaint happens from occasion to occasion: the adverts. And not just any adverts, the cronies wishing their bosses happy birthday or congratulations on their son’s or daughter’s wedding and such and such.

My question concerns the second complaint, how many people really advertise in Nigerian newspapers today? If we break it down we have our government officials, we have our big companies (MTN, Chivita, Etisalat, Guinness and all your other big brand names) that can afford to splash a N100, 000 plus, over numerous papers and for numerous days I might add. Then last, but not least you have your “normal” people section. People who place wanted ads to change of name notifications. These people are the minority and probably don’t bring in a fraction of the money your government crony or telecom company will.

I bring this all up because any Nigerian newspaper worth its name in salt has an advert department. When people think of advertising, they might think of the TV show Mad Men and something along that line, where companies come and you help them advertise a product by coming up with a design and so on and so forth, those are ad agencies. Advert departments in newspaper companies are anything, but. The people who work in the advert departments should really be called marketers, because that’s what they really are. Their primary job isn’t to come up with ad ideas, but to look for people to come place ads in their respective papers going from business to business. This is where the problem is. In theory this sounds like a great idea, in practicality it is one of the worst. The newspaper isn’t dead yet, but sometimes it acts like it is.

Ten to fifteen years ago, sending a team of people around town knocking on business doors and trying to convince potential clients to advertise in their papers might’ve made a lot of business sense. Today, no employee wants to really do that, especially one who knows 10-15 years ago, advertising never heard of social media. Facebook, twitter and not to mention mobile phones including the status changing Blackberry have created newer avenues for upstart businesses to advertise. Why spend money advertising in paper, when you can send a broadcast message to your friends, start a fan page on facebook and bombard your friends with tweets on twitter about what your business is. If any newspaper is looking to cash in on the young upscale business upstarts, the newspaper isn’t the way to go about it.

So what about the older established companies, don’t they get in on social media and why do they keep advertising in papers? Well, the answer my friend is already in the question. Established companies can afford to advertise in papers and because their markets go beyond those who can afford smart phones or are connected to the internet, the newspaper remains relevant to them and more importantly no one needs to tell them to come and advertise in the papers, they know their way around, they’re established.

Unfortunately, the “old dogs” who run the advert departments or the newspaper companies themselves haven’t taken this into consideration. The freelance advert employees they sent around town 10-15 years ago didn’t have this much connectivity to deal with so it became apparent that the paper was a very top option in advertising. Also those employees established contacts with companies with which they still deal with directly. Today’s freelance advertisers are going to have it tough! There are practically no new “big” companies and when they are, like I said, they necessarily don’t need you to knock on their doors, they’ll find you!

The pressure is now on for today’s freelance advertisers to bring in customers or get the axe. Considering the difficulty they will face going door to door being told, “We have no advertising budget this year” or “We don’t advertise”, the axe seems more pleasurable. Not to mention some newspaper companies seem reluctant to advertise in order to get people to advertise with them. Maybe they know something we don’t know. I believe advertisers shouldn’t necessarily have to go out there, but instead make clients come to them. In other words, newspapers need to find a way to make advertising more lucrative and less stressful for all parties involved, because we all know, truthfully speaking we see the same adverts from the same people in our newspapers meaning they are hardly any new customers coming in.

WHY I DISLIKED ZERO DARK THIRTY MUCH!

I didn’t expect to watch Zero Dark Thirty anytime soon, it just so happened I got one of those “for your consideration” copies, so I decided to see what all this Oscar brouhaha was about. From the beginning it doesn’t take long for ZDT to enforce all the negative stereotypes of Americans you’ve ever known or heard of to come to mind. The imperialism, the arrogant behavior is all on display. Basically the behavior the world has been trying not to associate with America for the past ten years just comes back, flooding your senses (not good!).

The torture scenes are an intricate part of the movie, I understand that. I’m the guy who didn’t throw a tantrum over Tarantino’s Django Unchained, even going as far as defending it. However, the torture scenes in ZDT are prolonged as if to justify to the world America’s use of torture (remember water-boarding?). For the record it doesn’t work. The main character Maya (played by the wonderful Jessica Chastain) goes from a naïve do-we-have-to-do-that girl to an it’s-alright-we’re-defending-ourselves woman who survives a nearby explosion as well as an assassination attempt.

Basically, this is a one-sided story told from the CIA’s perspective (so you know they’re the good guys) and unfortunately (or fortunately) it’s not the two-dimensional Pakistani/Afghan/Muslim/Arabs that suffer from the one-sidedness of the story; it’s the Americans, for this movie re-enforces more than anything else the image that America’s foreign policy is a sham. People are going to complain less of the two-dimensional all-Arabs/Muslims-are villains portrayal than they are over how the Americans really are the present masters of propaganda. The “alright” Muslims are portrayed as night-club goers who will sell you any information for the right price as long as you don’t attack them as we see in one scene in Kuwait. The “good” Muslim in ZDT is an American official who works for the CIA (see?) who for some odd reason says his prayers in a Pakistani-like accent then switches to American when having a conversation. Never knew prayers had accents, especially Pakistani considering the prayers are usually said in Arabic (the conundrum).

Katheryn Bigelow’s last movie Hurt Locker, which I absolutely loved (and written by the same writer as for ZDT) was a success, because they couldn’t get U.S military support for it, hence it was free of mangling. ZDT had a clear CIA backing so unlike Hurt Locker, where the villain was (metaphorically) war itself as a drug, ZDT has an actual villain in the form of Osama Bin Laden, who’s practically a ghost in the entire movie till his death (oh wait, you didn’t know how the movie ended? Sorry!). Osama Bin Laden has been placed a degree below Hitler in the eyes of the world. Unfortunately for him, he doesn’t get humanized as Hitler does when it comes to cinematic portrayal. In fact Maya spends the second act trying to prove his existence when she discovers his compound. Unfortunately for her this task proves difficult like trying to prove air to kids or God to an atheist (the first one is much easier).

Another thing I took issues with was how Pakistan is portrayed less as a country and more as a minefield where everyday is dangerous. I’m sure Pakistan has gone through some rough days since 9/11, but living in a country with its own “Islamist” sect, I can tell you it’s not the whole country that’s constantly on fire. No good side of Pakistan was really shown, except the hotel (which gets blown) and the American embassy. The Kuwait scene (American allies that they are) however got a skyscraper and beautiful lights adorning the skyline.

The third act of the movie is an almost all out continuous action scene, as if to justify the first two dramatic acts; it works. It doesn’t however answer the questions we asked two years ago: 1.) If Osama Bin Laden was caught, why wasn’t he brought in alive to be tried as is preached by the world’s “free” justice system? 2.) If he was killed for understandable reasons (resisting, firing back), why no pictures? And 3.) Why was he buried as a Viking and later claimed to be buried under Islamic rights? (His burial isn’t shown in the movie, perhaps for obvious reasons).

At the end of it all ZDT comes off as an entertaining piece of fiction based on facts(?), but if you’ve lived outside America (be you American or not), this movie will test your patience! It’s an unfair portrayal of the world at large.

          I will score it 4/5 for entertainment value though and for the fact that it actually got me to write this review. The accuracy (not so much the one-sidedness) of the story is its biggest minus.