Miss. Precious
Kanyip (not real names) is in her early twenties and is a girl that is
immensely and profoundly endowed by her creator with a near-perfect physique
and the beauty that even the world’s best known super model Miss. Naomi
Campbell would envy.
Born in Zaria,
Kaduna state to a very senior military officer who retired as a colonel but
died only few months before Miss. Precious could gain admission to read
international relations in one of the elitist private universities in South
West Nigeria. Her father built his retirement home in Kaduna, very close to
Zaria his ancestral homeland. But her mother who was a senior Director in a federal
ministry in Abuja was financially buoyant to see her through her university
studies and on retirement from her juicy federal appointment she decided to
relocate to her husband’s retirement mansion in one of the choice areas of
Kaduna. Her decision to move to Kaduna just before the year 2011 General
elections proved very costly because of the misfortune that soon befell her.
She was gruesomely
hacked to death by some armed rioters in the streets of Kaduna only few hours
after the April 2011 presidential election results were announced by Professor
Attahiru Jega, the chairman of the incredibly corrupt Independent National
Electoral Commission. The armed youth who went from house to house of those
suspected sympathizers of the winner of the presidential poll – Dr. Goodluck
Ebele Jonathan, descended on the retirement home of the Kanyips.
This bunch of
rioters made up essentially of almajiris and other motor park touts burnt down
the house that was built by this family which took the late retired officer
practically three decades to save enough money to finance the building of this
edifice which eventually served as his retirement home shortly before he died.
Incidentally, the Zaria country home of this same family was targeted and burnt
down by these suspected supporters of the opposition presidential candidate of
the Congress for Progressive Change -General Muhammadu Buhari.
Miss. Precious,
whose entire family assets located in their Zaria country side and Kaduna
metropolis were destroyed by the rampaging armed youth was practically
saved by mother luck because a day before hell was let loose in the streets of
northern Nigeria, she told her mother that she was tired of staying at home
doing nothing and that she was heading to Abuja to try her luck to see if she
could land herself a job in the Federal Civil service following an announcement
of three thousand Job vacancies. Her mother at first resisted her proposed trip
to Abuja and promised to call one of her former working colleagues to see if
her daughter can be assisted to get the job in one of the ministries that had
actually commenced recruitment of some university graduates to fill up the few
vacancies.
Her mother was
aware that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than
for a Nigerian young university graduate without a god-father to bag one of the
very scarce jobs in the Federal Civil Service. But her effort to hook up with
some of her professional colleagues who hold high profile appointments in some
of the ministries was unsuccessful, so Miss. Precious left for Abuja.
That trip would
later turn out as her saving grace because she would have similarly been hacked
to death if she had stayed back either in her parent’s Kaduna or Zaria homes
which came under heavy attacks by the rioters who could not be stopped by the
police or soldiers for the first one week that they undertook systematic
killing, maiming and destruction of property and lives of suspected Peoples
Democratic Party sympathizers including citizens who hail from the Southern
part of Nigeria.
Unsure of where to
go or who to meet on how she can possibly secure justice for the gruesome
murder of her mother and the destruction of her family entire assets, Miss.
Precious chose to stay back with one of her female former school mates who
resides in one of the most neglected and less developed outskirts of the
Federal Capital Territory while she kept trying her luck for a place in the
federal civil service.
For several months,
she could not secure the job but one evening when she was on her way home to
her friends’ place, she got a call from her friend who out of rude shock
informed her to hurry back home to help rescue some of their few belongings
thrown outside by the demolition squad from the Abuja Development Control that invaded
the vicinity and commenced demolition of the slums which government regarded as
illegal structures. But her return to the rubbles that was her former place of
abode gave her more heart ache than relief because she discovered to her
chagrin that some street urchins had helped themselves with most of her clothes
and other personal effects like shoes because her friend could not be
everywhere at the same time to prevent this mindless looting of their precious
belongings. Miss. Precious lost all her precious belongings and then headed
back to Abuja central business District where she was lucky to have met a Good
Samaritan who gave her accommodation for only but one week.
Caught literary
between the devil and the deep blue sea, Miss. Precious then made up her mind
to emigrate to God Knows where to just try to eke out a living since in her
considered reflection, she has been forsaken at home by both the government
that ought to provide her and her family safety from unwarranted physical
attacks by armed marauders and she has also suffered neglect by the nation’s
Justice system that for close to ten months failed to arrest, prosecute and
punish those who menacingly undertook the dastardly criminal act of arson and
targeted killing of her mother as well as hundreds of other citizens.
Miss Precious had a
beautiful encounter on the day she decided to travel outside the country. A man
in his late sixties who happened to have worked with her mother in her last
place of posting ran into her while she was making a phone call at the federal
secretariat complex, at the three arms zone of the nation’s capital and there
and then gave her a bank draft of one million, five hundred thousand naira to
help ease up some of her very pressing economic problems. That monetary assistance
that came from her mother’s former colleague with other cash she collected from
one of her formal school mates greatly helped her to realize her dream of
travelling outside the country to search for greener pastures after securing
two year visiting visa.
But she made the
wrong choice of going to one of the Eastern European nations that was
witnessing the current global economic recession. Miss Precious headed to the
Nnamdi Azikiwe international Airport and in less than ten hours she was already
in that Eastern European Country whereby she had a prior arrangement with a
male friend she met on Face book to stay briefly at his place before she could
find her feet in the foreign land.
Unknown to her, the
male friend who gave her a place to stay in his apartment was into hard drug
business and to compound her predicament in that foreign land, her host
succeeded in luring her to bed and thereby making her pregnant. Both of them
hurriedly wedded at the court which guaranteed her permanent residence permit
in her new place.
But just before she
delivered, her husband was arrested, charged and jailed for many years over
drug-related offences and unfortunately for her, the man never made any good
plan for her and her expectant baby by way of having bank savings for the up
keep of both mother and baby before he regains his freedom.
Miss Precious made
several unsuccessful visits to the Nigerian Embassy to seek for assistance
which she couldn’t get. She was conveniently forgotten abroad by her country.
She left the Nigerian Embassy more disappointed than she was before making the
fruitless effort to seek for assistance.
The story of Miss.
Precious is a replica of what most Nigerians go through in foreign countries.
The British Council
office in Nigeria has just released some findings on ‘gender in Nigeria report’
whereby the researchers found out among other damaging factors that; “Violence
is endemic in some public institutions including the police and certain
educational bodies, where an entrenched culture of impunity protects
perpetrators of this violence…Fear of violence hinders Nigeria’s development”.
Writing under
the title; “why do Africans migrate to the West? Mr. Moses E.
Ochonu blamed widespread poverty and political instability as two major factors
responsible for this phenomenon.
His words: “We all
know that poverty and economic desperation make people want to move to places
of perceived economic opportunity. This is so straightforward that it should
not be diluted by any psycho-social invocations. But if we do not define
poverty and hardship only in starkly economic terms but also in terms of what
one may call “the quality of life”, then it is possible to see how a successful
African professional in Africa, although not poor or desperate in the economic
sense could be poor and desperate in terms of the quality of his life.”
He stated further;
“For analytical convenience, let me call this kind of poverty existential
poverty. What I am positing here is what one may also call vicarious poverty,
in which poverty is experienced not by the self but indirectly through the
trauma of living in the midst of grinding poverty and of being assaulted daily
by reminders and images of poverty, economic collapse, and infrastructural
problems.”
The story of young
Miss Precious typifies a situation whereby government fails to carry out her
constitutional duty of protecting lives and property of the citizens while at
home and completely lacks any form of remedial assistance for her citizens who
are abroad.
To therefore find
out that few days back, that the senate President David Mark battled hard to
justify this total dereliction of duty on the side of government officials
towards the citizenry when he stated that it was not the duty of the Nigerian
government to defend Nigerians in conflict with foreign laws regarding drug
trafficking in foreign countries, is traumatizing to put it mildly.
His words: “Those
who go there to smear the name of the country should not expect protection from
the Nigerian government…that we won’t take. So leave them there, let them face
what they have gone for.”
David Mark who said
government of Nigeria was not under any legal obligation to assist Nigerian
citizens charged for drug-related offences further stated openly at the plenary
session of the senate thus; “…my conclusion is that we have done our best and
it should serve as a warning to others. The punishment in those countries is
death, so if they misfire they face the punishment”.
David Mark’s
statement is a proof of what Miss. Precious said when she exclaimed in
frustration that Nigerian citizens are forsaken at home and forgotten abroad.
David Mark is wrong
and indeed misfired to have drawn such an absurd conclusion that Nigerians in death
row for alleged drug offences in Indonesia, Malaysia, among others won’t enjoy
government assistance because they ‘misfired’.
Government is
legally obliged to ensure that her citizens abroad in conflict with the law are
given fair trials and properly represented by lawyers of their choice.
It is a shame that
while government officials allocate all the financial resources to themselves
and their family members, majority of Nigerians are left to die from poverty
which is the reason why most of them migrate to foreign land in search of
greener pastures.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko, Head, HUMAN
Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria; writes from www.huriwa.com.
21/5/2012
