Alexandersea Karounwi Adeola wrote: Why would any reasonable person justify the deportation of Nigerians within Nigeria? Is this the Nigeria we fought the civil war to protect its unity? Have you read The Casualties by John Pepper Clark where he stated that we are all victims of that Civil War? If this is the Nigeria we ganged up against the Ibos to maintain the sanctity of its unity, then, it is The Tragedy of Victory according to the war chronicle of Gen Isama Alabi. What I expect from Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola is to tender an unreserved apology to the Igbo nation for violating their senses of human dignity and other Nigerians; that is what any democratic government should do. I have listened to the lame excuses given by the state government and the Governor; I am worried that our leaders still find it difficult to understand the supremacy of our constitution and the substance of this democracy. You will be forced to question our hypocritical posture as a progressive party or politics; we are very far from it. Mr. Governor should simply purge himself of that self-opinionated toga of pride and intellectual superiority by doing what every responsive and responsible government will do by pleading with those he had offended in an occasion like this. I am worried that in the quest of remodeling Lagos into a Mega city, the poorest of the poor should not be taking to the slab of inhumanity for sacrifice in whatever disguise. It is an indictment on the part of us that we don’t care about the poor, we see the poor as not fit to be part of the larger society, therefore, we scorn them because their sights disgust us. This underscores why a government would arrest people, lock them up and bundle them to another state(s) within Nigeria and we are not concerned, forgetting that humanity is one. It is imperative to state that, this is not the first time the Governor would embark on the part of infamy especially as it relates to the deportation of Nigerians within Nigeria, he had in the recent past dumped Nigerians in Ibadan and several other northern states, we were not bothered because our kinsmen were not affected that is the major reason why he would choose to repeat it again. I do not see it as an orchestrated design to punish the Igbo people rather I am compelled to see it as a failure of the needed required intellectual input in government policies across board, that is why this government would continue to rationalize irrational disability. Does it mean that a democratically elected government cannot rehabilitate 76 poor people? What concrete steps did this government take to alleviate their sufferings before their sudden deportation? I would like to put it crudely, I am sure the Ibos voted for this Governor, what offence(s) have they committed other than being poor? It is a natural law that you will continue to have destitute and poor people in our city as long as we neglect our rural communities. It’s a fact, every modern society has poor people, I have been accosted at the entrance of London Hilton in Park lane by a beggar, in Mexico they are under the bridge, in Brazil you find them at the entrance of Blue Tree Hotel, in Japan they even run after you, in Switzerland you see them on the roadside from Zurich to Davos, Caracas, Netherlands or in the entire East or West Africa, I have seen poor people begging for alms. When does poverty become a crime in Nigeria? It is disheartening that some of us have decided to support this unpopular decision of Gov. Babatunde Raji Fashola for no any other reason other than because he is a Yoruba man, too bad, you should be ashamed of yourself because his action has only succeeded in portraying Nigeria as a jungle where the rule of the might is the code of conduct for everyone.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 08:32:42 +0000