By Promise Adiele
Wole Soyinka’s The Trial of Brother Jero and Ngugi wa Thiongo’s The Trial of Dedan Kimathi dramatise trial in different, compelling strata through creative literary imagination. While the lead character in Soyinka’s play, Brother Jero, is confronted with psychological and moral trials, the major character in Ngugi’s play, Dedan Kimathi, is faced with physical and political trials in the law courts administered by British imperialist legal machinery. The two plays showcase the concept of trial as possessing a soul and life based on different pedestals – psychological, moral trial and physical, political trial. These types of trials bestride Nigeria’s socio-political landscape with compulsive immediacy just as in the two texts referenced above. Sadly, the Nigerian trial structure is saved from the people’s collective apprehension when politicians and public officers are involved compared to when the underclass is involved. It is an accurate definition of the density of our ill-conceived mentality to accommodate established criminals while we bay for the blood of mere delinquents.
However, while Brother Jero is guilty of religious deception and spiritual fraud, his trial ends at the psychological and moral level. It does not lead him to the law courts but Dedan Kimathi is immediately hauled to the law courts for self-determination and struggles against imperialist impositions. It captures Nigeria’s arena of absurdities where indicted criminal political office holders are excused from the law courts but restricted to psychological and moral trials with delayed recompense. At the same time, underage children who went on a rampage to protest feral hunger unleashed on them by an unconscionable government are forced into the law courts for trial. Perhaps it is a historical derivative of Biblical origination where the people asked Pilate to release Barabbas the criminal for them and crucify the innocent Christ. Since then, criminals have enjoyed a sense of freedom while the innocent face trial and perish afterwards.
Nigeria is on trial but Nigerians do not know it. A dispassionate look at Nigeria and Nigerians will reveal millions of the citizens, especially some who pretend to be educated, are the most self-deluding, cowardly people on the face of the planet. While our country boils and consistently degenerates on all fronts with hunger and starvation sauntering in and out of homes, holding the populace captive, millions of the citizens committedly chase shadows with such inconsequential past-time as the US election, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the 2027 elections, and other immaterial issues that bear little or nothing to their lives when compared to the economic woes unleashed on the country by Mr Bola Tinubu in conspiracy with IMF and World Bank. The most pathetic incongruity in the country recently is the arraignment of minors in an Abuja court for treasonable felony and plotting to overthrow the Tinubu administration. Although Mr. Bola Tinubu has ordered the immediate release of the minors, it has added to the list of farcical narratives that describe an unpopular, rudderless government without compassion, commitment, or empathy.
I am not about to defend those minors whose poverty-stricken, impoverished appearances hugely contrasted the furnished chambers of the Abuja court. Such a contrasting parallel between opulence and poverty is the story of a country in the doldrums. I am not about to defend or absolve those minors as many writers and columnists have rightly done. I am not also about to explain the well-known composite infirmity of the Nigerian judiciary. But I am about to examine crime and punishment in Nigeria and its duplicitous matrix where the real thieves (armed robbers if you like) who have practically vanquished the country walk free like Brother Jero while our judicial chambers are desecrated with the presence of minors impoverished and crippled by hunger like Dedan Kimathi. These conditions exist because Nigerians have collectively permitted them to exist. We all cry in our private corners about the hellish conditions in the country but are hit by existential mute paralysis in identifying and implicating those responsible for our anguish. Rather than rise with one voice, we chase inconsequential issues like ethnicity, Hausa/Fulani is this, Igbo is that, Yoruba is this, Urhobo is that, Christianity is this, Islam is that… and our country precariously totters at the edge, hanging by the precarious precipice. Instead of the arraignment of the minors in Abuja to provoke nationwide angst against the government, instead of that defilement of our judicial chambers to inflame us towards the government, we cling to base sentiments to excuse and justify evil all in the name of politics. If the truth must be told, the arraignment of those minors in Abuja was a national disgrace for every Nigerian, an illustration of justice in parody and a means of exposing those who should face trial. Yes, those who should face trial, and not the minors are my business in this piece.
There is a consensus across Nigeria and indeed worldwide that the country’s 2023 general election was the worst in the history of Nigeria. Yes, we agree. But given our timid, reticent disposition, we accept all the vile anomalies associated with the exercise and move on into the abyss of an implacable socio-economic furnace. Since the election, no one has faced trial. No one was arrested or convicted of any crime. Yet, there were people guilty of ethnic profiling and instigating violence which led to the loss of many innocent lives. Such people should face trials and not malnourished minors protesting bad governance, deprivation, and starvation. In the last election, many politicians who benefitted from it indulged in forgery and perjury by presenting false certificates and supported such spurious documents with claims of graduating from schools before they were established. Such people should indeed face trials for crimes against the state. Somehow, I wonder why Nigerians do not want to engage in that conversation, to critically examine the sublunary and spiritual implications of having people with forged backgrounds legislate and superintend over the affairs of millions of people. Perhaps, that could just be the root of our problems because our present dispensation is built and sustained on a fraudulent foundation.
We must commend the Nigerian police for quickly arresting and arraigning innocent children for protesting against hunger and starvation in their fatherland. But the police and other law enforcement agents must not stop there. They must visit the Nigerian legislature, political office holders, and sundry public servants and check their financial records. Many of the lawmakers have fat files with the EFCC. Many former governors practically liquidated their states before leaving office. Many contractors collected money and disappeared. I know of a certain spokesperson of a political party who embezzled 2 billion naira meant for refurbishing an airport tarmac. Such people should be facing trial and rotting in jail now and not just minors whose only crime was to call the attention of their traducers to the hunger in the land. The armoury of our collective consciousness continues to overflow with tragic certitude because our society is established on a structure of infinite double standards where criminals walk free and innocent people are implicated. Nigeria is on trial. Nigerians are on trial for allowing these ludicrous conditions to subtly define their proximate realities. That is why some demented fellows will justify the arraignment of minors while their more sophisticated, older criminal counterparts bear the badge of honour in our land.
If Nigerian law courts must come alive parading minors for protesting against hunger and crass irresponsibility in the corridors of power that have initiated them into the clan of poverty, the law courts must not assume a lopsided identity, it must be all-encompassing. Recently lawmakers were allegedly indicted for budget padding, how many have been arrested and made to face trial? Google my essay (Budget padding: Between Yahoo boys and Yahoo men). During the last currency change, many Nigerians lost their lives. Intriguingly, only Godwin Emefiele is facing trial. Mohammadu Buhari who gave orders to Emefiele is ensconced in his palatial mansion in Daura, reaping the rotten fruit of his inelegant time in power. Ministers, public office holders, and other government officers have been indicted for many financial infractions but everyone is free, and no one is facing trial. That no INEC official has faced trial after the last election is the most confounding puzzle in living memory. But we salivate over the arraignment of minors for legitimately protesting against hunger and privation. Nigerians are not interested in engaging in these conversations and until they are ready, we will continue to chase a mirage and dissipate energy on inanities.
Dr. Promise is of Mountain Top University and can be reached via Promee01@yahoo.com, X: @drpee4
