TEARGAS IS A BASTARD My day job? Well, let me talk about it for once. On my way into NASS this morning, I saw men in balaclavas (no joke), clutching heavy-duty guns. Really, I should have turned around and just gone home but I flashed my ID and went in. So I, too, watched from the upper floor as the Speaker forced his way through a line of anti- terrorism policemen and a cloud of teargas. Not every day stuff, I tell you. And the small mob began to chant, ‘No police! No police!’ It made you fear for the two or three policemen down there. But that’s not what I really want to talk about, this invasion of the Legislature. I will not follow you and pretend that it is the unprecedented travesty you say it is. The Executive has been invading the Legislature up and down the length and breadth of this country for years. Just that it happens in lowly state houses of assembly in obscure, out of the way states. The same way Boko Haram was killing judges and sacking police stations for years before they finally made the headlines. But, no matter, the dumb hawks around the President have given the APC something else to hit him over the head with. Fine. We will sit through another round of pots and kettles arguing about blackness. Okay. What I really want to talk about is that one can of teargas that got sprayed INSIDE the grand reception of the National Assembly; the one that spewed its poisonous contents into the air and had me choking on the wad of wet table napkins I had to press to my nose, while racing for the back door. That’s the one I want to talk about. Teargas is a bastard. Tell them I said so. A bastard! It had one lady throwing up in a corner. Another one passed out. And a man was rushed out to one of three ambulances parked out back. This country. None of them had drivers. And by the time a driver was found (maybe half an hour later) the victim was wobbling around again on his feet, licking dry lips in shock. So, let me tell you about that one can of teargas. It began with the small mob chanting, ‘No police! No police in here!’ and standing like a wall between the two or three policemen and the Speaker, who had been rushed, face covered by a handkerchief, into the Reps chambers. The policemen got the message and began to retreat across the reception to a safe spot on the Senate side. You know how the scent of blood – of a retreating enemy – only emboldens mad dogs. That was how it was. The mob snapping at the heels of the policemen, taunting them. Then one man came forward and shoved one of the policemen in the back. Not a felele kind of shove. No. This was the kind of shove that, if you were not expecting it, WILL launch you forcefully into outer space. That was what happened. And even me, I thought, ‘Ah-ah. There are going now. Let them go.’ But, sometimes, we Nigerians we like to kick people very well when they are down. Sometimes. Really rubbish them, you know, when they are most vulnerable. We like to do this, sometimes. But, also, we Nigerians we hate to be rubbished like that in public, you know. We have big egos. The ‘Do you know who I am?’ type egos. So, the policeman spun around angrily and – I’ve spent all day thinking about that moment – whipped out a can of teargas and sprayed it into his assailant’s face. And then again into the air. Just like that. Not minding that he was in an enclosed space, that he was INSIDE the Parliament, that he was surrounded by innocent bystanders, that there was a clinic underneath his feet well visited by women and children; he just pulled out that can and sprayed it. And – all day I’ve been thinking – what if it had been a gun on his waist instead? I have told you, he was provoked. But public office should come with restraint – lots and lots of it, because the resources at your disposal are not really yours to use as you will. You cannot use the power you have by virtue of your office to pursue your enemies. Honestly, do we really understand that? You cannot use it to reward your friends either. I say this as the son of a politician who is constantly vilified for failing to ‘empower’ hangers-on. Let me tell you something. If somebody slaps you when you have on the boxing gloves of Governor, you should take off those gloves (because they were bought, not with your money, and it was you not the tax payer that was slapped) then slap the person back. Do you understand me? Governors, and Presidents, and Senators, and Reps, and State Assembly members, and all you people who like to put your faces on stuff built with everybody’s money, the way you occupy that office is our problem; the way you wrap your fingers round power and use it to pursue your personal vendettas, that IS our problem in this country. Myopia. Mental and spiritual myopia. Honestly! That somebody will spend four years in office scheming how somebody else must (or must not) succeed him. Is that your work? Eh? Why don’t you face your work then? And leave us, THE PEOPLE, to face our own. Please. Okay. Ranting over. Feeling better. But – hmm, my people – teargas is a bastard.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:17:09 +0000
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