OfiliSpeaks: Nigeria – Guilty Until Proven Guilty?

THIEF THIEF THIEF

You can be walking down the streets of Lagos and someone can literally pull your cloth and just start shouting THIEF THIEF THIEF.

And before you know it they have poured Kerosene on your body … fuel scarcity won’t even save you.

4 tires I mean 4 minutes later and tires will be wrapped around your body like a hungry anaconda … recession won’t save you! Because, used and new they will find money to buy tires.

Any attempt to verbally plead your innocence will be met with a plank to the head until you are knocked unconscious.

But that won’t last long because the fire burning your flesh will bring you straight back to your reality …

As people gather to watch/record you burn as they pat themselves on their backs commenting “we got a THIEF.”

After all is said and burned, LAWMA will come to scrape your black ashes from the road … so that traffic can flow again.

But sadly at the end of the day, nobody can coherently explain your crime, nobody knows what you did wrong and nobody has even heard your side of the story.

All they know is that they heard the words THIEF THIEF THIEF and started burning without due process.

CORRUPTION CORRUPTION CORRUPTION

You can be literally sleeping in your house and someone will break into your house and start shouting CORRUPTION CORRUPTION CORRUPTION.

And before your know it, the media would have poured kerosene on your name … investigative journalism will not save you.

Your properties new and used will be wrapped with so much EFCC tape that your plasma screen will start cracking. But that’s your business, why should you have Plasma screen when ordinary Nigerians are suffering with Cathodic Ray Tubes screens!

Any attempt to plead your innocence will be met with planks of social media commentators who will magically find FREE DATA to burn your name on the internet till the internet becomes unconscious.

But that won’t last long, because the courts will grant you bail but the government will reject it to bring you back to the reality of your predicament. After all this is not America, in today’s Nigeria you are guilty until proven guilty.

At the end of the day after the ashes of your reputation have been extinguished … people will struggle to state clearly what you did wrong or why you are still prison. All they know is that they heard CORRUPTION CORRUPTION CORRUPTION and started judging without due process!

[Muhammadu Buhari,] I’ve often canvassed that corruption in Judiciary be tackled to help [the] anti-corruption war. But do so within bounds of due process. – Obiageli Ezekwesili