23022018 - Confusion over Yobe girls; angry parents stone gov

18 — Vanguard, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
AN alert and dedicated policeman
on duty made the difference
between life and death for many
members of the University of
Maiduguri, UNIMAID, academic
community when he shot and killed
a male Boko Haram suicide bomber
with deadly Improvised Explosive
Devices, IEDs, strapped to his body
in the evening hours of Monday,
February 19, 2018.
According to a routine situation
report made available by the Borno
State Commissioner of Police, Mr
Damien Chukwu, to the Governor,
Alhaji Kashim Shettima, the Mobile
Police officer, Mr Baba Zakari (F/
No.241253 of 53PMF) at 7.20 pm on
that day sighted the deadly intruder
trying to get into the university’s
compound and shot him dead
without injury or danger to any
other life or property.
If not for the vigilance and
commitment of this gallant officer,
Borno policeman makes a big
difference
some of the law-abiding members of
the university community who are
still alive and going about their
normal livelihood would have added
to the gory statistics and body count
that the Boko Haram Islamist terror
has wreaked in the state, especially
the University of Maiduguri, in
recent years.
Baba Zakari, by this feat, draws
our attention once again to the
importance of our law enforcement
agencies in our national life.
Despite the fact that all our
uniformed and security forces are
routinely linked to so many acts of
malfeasance, corruption,
dereliction of duty, partiality,
special treatment for “sacred cows”
and human rights violations, they
are still very indispensable for the
protection of our lives and property.
No matter what may be their faults,
the Police are still our friends.
Our security agencies still have a
good number of patriotic and
dedicated officers like Baba Zakari
who are ready to give their all to
keep our country safe. It is
unfortunate that these officers are
often distracted by the many failings
of governance which force the
average Nigerian to look for ways
of making ends meet. The Police and
other security agencies are part and
parcel of our society and its
prevailing attributes. They will
definitely improve in their
performance when the crucial issues
of good governance are addressed.
As a society, we must find ways of
motivating those who have signed a
contract to risk their lives to protect
us. We must show them respect and
appreciation for their services.
Highly motivated national security
architecture will focus more on their
jobs and help secure this country.
We commend the Borno State
Government and the State Police
Command for steps taken to
appreciate Mopol Baba Zakari’s
gallantry. It will not only spur him
to do more for his country, it will also
encourage more officers to go the
extra mile on their duty posts.
Sometimes it takes only one
individual to make a huge
difference.
By Ikeogu Oke
It should not surprise us/That a snake would
swallow/Cash in a country so rich/It sought use
for money.
Even animals in a zoo/Know the use of money.
That it builds and keeps their cages,/And feeds
their beastly souls. And the snake is the one/
They send to hunt for cash.
– Ikeogu Oke, “The Cash Snake”
THE snake that recently swallowed N36
million kept in the offices of the Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB,
in Markudi was not the first of its kind to
interfere that remarkably in the affair of
humans.
In the Garden of Eden, one of its ancestors, a
snake that could speak and was full of guile,
played the key role in The Fall of Man. As
stated in the book of Genesis, it managed to
convince Eve, Adam’s wife, to eat the fruit of
the knowledge of good and evil in disobedience
to God, even after God had warned the first
couple that they would die any day they ate the
fruit. Think of a snake so cunning and
mischievous that it could convince the
matriarch of humanity to eat what would then
amount to the fruit of suicide!
The encounter between Eve and the snake
took place in Adam’s absence. And as soon as
she reunited with Adam she offered him the
forbidden fruit and managed to convince him
to eat it. And both, having eaten it, realised
that they were naked, to God’s chagrin.
And for foiling what seemed to have been
God’s plan to keep humanity in an ideal place,
a garden, a pristine bower of innocence where
humans would roam naked like other animals,
the snake, you might say, got its comeuppance.
God cursed it, together with man and woman.
God declared that it would thenceforth live
without limbs. “Cursed are you more than all
cattle, And more than every beast of the field;”
OPINION
Appreciating the Cash Snake
God fumed. “On your belly you will go, And
dust you will eat All the days of your life.”
God also ruled that the snake’s offspring and
those of humans would always be at
loggerheads. And that the snake’s descendants
would bite those of humans whenever the
opportunity presents itself, and the descendants
of humans crush the head of the snake’s
offspring underfoot as often as possible.
Over the intervening millennia, millions of
casualties, dead or injured, have piled up on
both sides of this endless confrontation between
We should be appreciative
that, as it did recently by being
the first country to appoint
dead people to public office,
ours has made history again as
the country where the cash
snake was first identified
humans and snakes. And not a few snakes have
strangled humans and swallowed them whole
like the JAMB cash, even though there is no
record, to my knowledge, of any human having
swallowed a whole snake, dead or alive.
So, between snakes and humans, we should
know who is winning the war, especially in
terms of enacting the bizarre, even without
any snake having taken it to the point of
swallowing millions of cash belonging to one
of our government agencies, and by
implication, humans, and disappearing
without trace.
In passing, it must be said that the snake that
deceived Eve has been rightly condemned for
its role in the Fall of Man, by which is meant
God’s expulsion of man and woman from the
Garden of Eden for the sin of disobedience.
However, I think it would be wrong not to
acknowledge the silver lining in the cloud of
that deceit, especially with regard to how things
evolved in the post-Eden world. For, since the
first couple realised that they were naked and
needed to wear “clothes” after eating the fruit
whose consumption the snake introduced to
them through Eve, resulting in God producing
“clothes” for them, it then follows that the
world owes the origin of its highly lucrative
textile and fashion industries to that snake,
which crept limbless out of Eden and into
improved versatility, possibly flicking its
tongue in contempt of the curse placed on it by
God.
And as a proof of the improved versatility, it
has since evolved from a mere fruit-plucking
reptile into the only creature that can swallow
its own kind whole. And what’s the use of limbs
when, without them, a snake can run faster
than most limbed creatures; and can climb to
the top of the tallest trees faster than most
limbed creatures, for fun or in search of prey;
and its menu is comprised mainly of limbed
creatures including man, its sworn adversary
on account of the divine curse? And when the
lack of limbs has not prevented it from reaching
the farthest ends of the earth? And when one of
its type has evolved – a development that even
Darwin should find intriguing – into the cash
snake, to which I would ascribe the genus
Pythonidae Moneytarius, able to swallow N36
million of public funds without distress, it
becomes indisputable that its species has
scored the ultimate triumph in adaptability.
Which other creature can do this?
Even God must be amazed that the same
creature that thwarted Him in Eden has also
subverted His curse by contriving to become
not the eater of dust He wanted but one of
earth’s most successful predatory carnivores.
But there are more reasons why the cash
snake should be for us an object of
appreciation, besides wonder. Its feat
reinforces our Central Bank’s case for a
cashless economy. The snake wouldn’t have
bothered about an ATM card because it would
know that it would need the owner’s PIN to
access the cash, and given the almost nonexistent
probability of its discovering the PIN
let alone cashing N36 million from an ATM
with the N100,000 seal on daily withdrawals.
So our Central Bank can draft the snake into
its campaign for a cashless economy. Imagine
how effective it would be to persuade our
citizens to accept a cashless economy with the
message “Beware Of The Cash Snake! Go
Cashless!” laid beside the image of a snake
swallowing wads of Naira notes.
And for those who may be wondering why a
snake would swallow N36 million of public
funds – even in a country so rich it sought use
for money – it is to show us Nigerians that
animals know the use of money unlike us,
especially those living in zoos and game
reserves. They know that money is useful for
their feeding and for building and maintaining
their cages and other facilities. So, like I said
in the above epigraph, the cash snake is the
one they send to hunt for cash (to fund their
welfare). And we should appreciate its risking
its life in the service of the animal world and
what its mission says of the type of organisation
that exists in that world compared to our
country. Also, we should be appreciative that,
as it did recently by being the first country to
appoint dead people to public office, ours has
made history again as the country where the
cash snake was first identified.
*Mr. Oke, a poet, wrote from Lagos.
C
M
Y
K