Simon Abah, Port Harcourt, Rivers State: There is, as I write this, so much hue and cry over the attempted arrest of a judge in Rivers State in the wee hours of Saturday last week in his residence by members of the DSS and police.
Some have described that attempt as a Gestapo-style kidnap but foiled by the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, as speculated in ways that the Parthians, in the Parthian Empire of ancient days, would have envied. It is commendable, because even though the Parthians were brave warriors, they cowed under the domination of the Roman Empire, with only a garrison of troops on their land.
Even though I do not support Hitlerian policies, I wonder why the crying jag. I wonder why no one raises a protest when commoners are daily arrested without warrant for arrest by security forces in this country. Even when a human rights activist was slain the other day, no one raised this sort of protest, not even his colleagues on the Bench.
Life for the poor, in this country, is to work, serve the rich, be diffident, and be exploited by the rich. The security forces and the Nigerian system, instead of protecting all, protect only the rich.
It is nerve-wracking for me. Both the rich and poor pay taxes. It is amusing because the banks do not discriminate against receiving money from the rich and the poor. And when they suddenly go burst, both the rich and the poor cry.
It is worrying today to hear tales of graft levelled at high-ranking members of the judiciary. Without dissimulation, they rub it in and I get the impression that they are beginning to mislead us all.
The politicians in Nigeria are on holiday, they live happily on our account. It saddens me to read in this medium about another governor elsewhere who it was alleged masterminded the raining of blows on a judge in his state the other day commenting about the impiety not to God but to the judiciary.
PUNCH
