Senatus Consultum Ultimum

Senatus Consultum Ultimum

I decided to borrow a big grammar from a Nigerian politician, Patrick Obahiagbon. Yes, the grammar is Senatus Consultum Ultimum (Please Google the meaning).

The senate is willing to pass a bill that would give 15 year jail term to anyone who pays or receives ransom for the release of any person kidnapped, imprisoned or wrongfully confined.

That is quite encouraging. At least the senate is working and the senators are not paid by taxpayers’ money to Sidon look or sleep away ideas.

The terrorism prevention (Amendment) Bill, 2021 already scaled second reading during plenary is sponsored by Senator Ezenwa Francis Onyewuchi.

Please, let’s give the Nigerian senate a big round of applause.

Still reading the news on my phone while waiting for my 90 West Bus when something caught my attention at the Vendome bus stop, Montreal, Quebec. It was a little boy of not more than four years old and his mother, who kept asking why his mom asked him to pull off his jacket in the scorching son.

Woman: ‘Andy, just pull it off!’ The woman yelled about the fifth time.

Boy: ‘Mom, common! Stop yelling. Just tell me why you want me to pull it off’.

Woman: ‘Andy because I want you to pull it off’. She said with finality.

Boy: ‘ But that is a stupid answer!’

Like the boy’s mother, Like the Senate.

The proposed bill is a totality of purveyor of doom. What senile machinations and manifestations of people who have lost touch with reality?

Let’s just imagine that the said sponsor of the bill, Francis Onyewuchi, former senate president Olubukola Saraki, current Senate president  Ahmed Lawan or even the President of Nigeria’s child or children were kidnapped just like the students of the Greenfield University and thereafter killed for failing to pay the ransom.

Would the story be the same?

Ajala! Tan na o?’

‘Eyin ko ni’. The literary interpretation is simply, who has beaten you up and the crying child responded ‘You’.

When politicians gather unemployed youths to do stuff that they can’t ever allow their children who have been ‘stashed’ in foreign countries do.

Omo l’omo lo je abegunde.

Politicians display affluence as if there is no tomorrow in the midst of hunger, extreme poverty and gross unemployment. Average pockets parents strive to ensure their children go to school and after graduation, no meaningful jobs for them.

Some of them ready to earn decent income have become okada and uber riders. While others who have no hope are doing menial jobs to survive the harsh reality of life.

I hate everything evil, terrorism, kidnapping and sorcery. But you can not apply Tylenol to a stomachache rather Imodium would be the best.

So, if parents whose children or wives are kidnapped and their captors are requesting for ransom, they should not give and risk losing their loved ones? I hear.

He who wears a shoe that pinches feels it more. Kindly ask my former boss, Mr. Steve Nwosu whose wife and daughter were kidnapped in separate incidents, what he went through financially, emotionally and physically.

You senators don’t know what you are trying to pass into law. You want to pass massive death, doom and apocalypse of malediction.

Before you pass a bill that even went to the second reading, did anyone ask if any of their family members had been kidnapped before or even had to negotiate the ransom through the one and only Abubakar Mahmud Gumi, a supposed Sharia Sheik.

People who live in Mount Everest gated mansion with loads of security operatives most times have lost touch with reality.

I am sure; some senators don’t know that a bottle of coke is now N150 because they live off tax payers’ money.

An adage in Yoruba says ‘Amokun eru e ma wo!’ Oke le wo ni? Isale le ba wo’.It simply means do not solve the problem superficially but proffer a lasting solution.

Ask yourselves salient and truthful questions. Friends who come out laughing with each other have only lied to themselves.

The other day, Senator Smart Adeyemi of Kogi West lamented the insecurity in Nigeria.

Please ask questions. Who does Gumi front for? Who takes the ransom? Is this bill sensible enough? What if am affected, will I allow my child or family member die just like that because of a stupid law?

I will leave you with the words of Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, after Nigeria’s first military coup in 1966.

“Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places that seek bribes and demand 10 percent, those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as Ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”