Opinion
Azu Ishiekwene
I don’t get involved with what the security services do or
how. Their ways are so complex and their motives so
unsearchable that sometimes you’ll be forgiven for
thinking that working from the answer to the question is
the standard operating procedure. Of course, you are
told that whatever happens in between is in the public
interest.
As far as fiction imitates life, there is a striking
resemblance between the recent hyperactivity in
Nigeria’s security services and what happened in a novel
set in mid-17 th century England.
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes
Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
(famously called “Double Trouble” by the English press) is
a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the
coming of the End Times.
The part that reminds me of what is obviously a hectic
season for the security services – from the arraignment
of the #EndBadGovernance protesters on charges of
felony to the police raid on Labour House and run-ins
with the NLC president and civil society activists – is the
time in England when, according to Pratchett and
Gaiman, witch-finding was a respectable profession.
General Hopkins
At that time, there was a certain General named
Matthew Hopkins. You would think that in pre-industrial
England, when poverty, disease and unemployment were
rampant, the last thing the state would be interested in
would be a witch-hunt. But no. Witch-hunting was good
business.
Hopkins charged each town and village nine pence for
every witch he found. But that wasn’t enough. Since he
wasn’t paid by the hour, and the reward for not finding
any witches was a thank you and a bowl of soup, he
invented a way to earn more. He went out of his way to
find witches, which made him unpopular in the towns
and villages.
When Hopkins’ madness became insufferable, the
villagers framed him as a witch, much to the pleasure of
the local authorities, who were also tired of paying him.
They hanged him. Hopkins, by many accounts, became
the last Witchfinder General in England.
The world may have substantially passed the time when
people were hunted, hanged and burned at the stake on
suspicion of witchcraft. But I’m concerned that there is a
growing similarity between witchcraft and how Nigeria’s
security services look for enemies.
A British suspect
Listening to the spokesperson of the Nigeria Police Force,
Olumuyiwa Adejobi, explain why the force raided Labour
House, the siege on the Labour leadership, and the
charge of treason against protesters and their alleged
British sponsor, Andrew Martin Wynne, I can almost see
the ghost of 17 th century England. By his looks – and one
must respect his decision to keep his shaggy hair and
matted beard – Wynne might have been lumped
together with those in the “pointy hat” in those days.
Not in Nigeria
But Nigeria is not Hopkins’ England. This is not 1961
when Joseph Tarka was detained for three weeks and
charged with treason by the Crown for “inciting” the
protests in Tiv land, only to be acquitted later for lack of
evidence.
It is not the Nigeria of 1962 when Chief Obafemi
Awolowo was prosecuted for treasonable felony for
purportedly working with Ghana to overthrow the
government of Nigeria, a scandalous charge borne out of
politics rather than law.
Anthony Enahoro, a journalist’s journalist and scourge of
the British government, was also jailed twice for sedition,
once for an article mocking a former governor and then
for another article “inciting Nigerian troops against the
British army.”
Then, he was deported from England as a “fugitive
offender” and jailed a third time along with Awolowo for
treasonable felony.
This is not the Nigeria of military president General
Ibrahim Babangida, where human rights activists Gani
Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Beko Ransome-Kuti and Baba
Omojola were hounded and imprisoned on the spurious
charge of treason by a military government that had lost
its way. It is not the Nigeria where Babangida deported
sociology lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU)
Patrick Wilmot for the “treasonable sin” of teaching what
“he was not paid to teach.”
Or the one where General Sani Abacha hounded NADECO
leaders, including President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for
standing up to the extreme human rights abuses of that
government.
In 2024?
This is 2024, with a government that parades some of the
most well-known human rights figures up and down the
corridors of power and even among the principal officers
of the National Assembly. Where is this ghost of 17 th –
century England coming from?
Let me be clear. Protest is not – and should not – be
chaos and anarchy. The killing of protesters and police
officers during the #EndBadGovernance protests in
August, which left seven persons dead, the arson at the
NCC building in Kano, the open calls for a military
takeover, and the symbolic insinuation that Russian
intervention was welcome are inexcusable.
The silence of some top politicians and leaders, especially
from the North, fueled suspicions of complicity if not
connivance. Yet, why add a third if two wrongs don’t
make a right?
I don’t know what Intelligence is saying or the briefing
President Tinubu is getting. Of course, he needs them.
We need them, too, as citizens. No modern state can do
without them. But in many countries, their job has
become more valuable and sophisticated – and one
might even say, often dangerously sophisticated – far
beyond the voodoo of Hopkins’ witch-hunt in the east of
England.
Like Aziraphale and Cowley
For example, for decades in the US, and going back to the
Vietnam War, through the Nixon years and the Cold War
and even the destabilisation of Libya, the Intelligence
services perpetrated some of the vilest acts in pursuit of
the so-called enemies of the state, actually a mask for
vendetta and a ladder for the ascendancy of the deep
state.
Like the angel Aziraphale and the demon Cowley in Good
Omens, the good and bad guys in the security services
have shared interests. They routinely collaborate for
good and ill, sometimes at the state’s expense.
Take heed
Tinubu must take heed. He has a competent Attorney
General and Minister of Justice in Lateef Fagbemi, SAN,
who should advise him to tread softly. The history of our
security services, especially the bad habits inherited from
colonial rule and reinforced by the long years of military
rule and entitled politicians, hasn’t changed much.
It’s not the business of police officers, the state security
service or special advisers to run the government. That’s
not their job. They cannot abridge the people’s freedoms
in a quest for ascendancy. Those who breach the law in
exercising their liberty should not face the justice that
reminds us of Hopkins’ England but a process consistent
with modern progressive society, one that Tinubu was
voted to uphold.
As the veteran journalist Owei Lakemfa said in his
column last week, the danger is not so much the
protesters, their sponsors or the witches in a coven
somewhere. The biggest threat to the land is the
hardship in plain sight, compounded by the lavish
lifestyle of government officials and the lack of clarity
about what is next. And the president doesn’t need
Witchfinder General Hopkins to tell him.
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author
of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.
12th September, 2024.
C.E.
Tags: Azu Ishiekwene
