Our national dailies have recently rendered a vital public service to readers by publishing the story of 27-year old Uzoma Okere, a courageous young lady who was brutalized within Victoria Island, Lagos, along with her traveling companions, by Rear Admiral Harry Arogundade’s convoy. It was interesting that, as the naval ratings beat her, they asked her if she knew what it was to be a rear admiral. This is precisely the core of the matter.

The bloated ego, exaggerated feeling of self-importance, of this rear admiral and his men had been wounded. From our Nigerian experience, it was a miracle they did not murder the young lady and her colleague, Abdulazeez Abdulhahi. But both Uzoma and the young man received head wounds from gun butts and bruises from whips.

One of the two pregnant women traveling with them, said to be seven to eight months heavy, according to the reports, relapsed into shock from the trauma and did not report to work the following day. Whatever this could mean to her pregnancy is left to imagination but psychologists will confirm that it is not advisable for a pregnant woman to be exposed to brutal spectacles and even verbal warfare at home or in public.

Babies, even in wombs, can be adversely affected by such uncivilized incidents.
I am a living witness, as I am sure many out there will also testify, to the insufferable and overbearing public attitude of some of our military brass when they experience anything, no matter how slightly, they consider effrontery by “idle civilians.” Apart from other siren- blowing escorts from whom I have tasted the bitterness of street terrorism, on two separate occasions my old car was nearly smashed by impatient military/police convoys.

On one of those occasions, I lost a rear light of my old car.
It is hard not to detest such military and police officers when one encounters the kind of molestation experienced by Uzoma, Abdulazeez and the two pregnant women in their car. It is a gnawing feeling of resentment combined with a kind of helplessness. Like Uzoma, my driver was simply trying to clear off the traffic, but his offence was that he did not do it fast enough, that is, according to the timing of the escorts.

Uzoma was probably saved from death by having to ask one of her colleagues to telephone her father, a retired colonel (now serving as Sergeant-at-Arms at the National Assembly), who intervened and was able to mollify Rear Admiral Agrogundade. Incidentally, both men were colleagues at the military academy, with Okere being much more senior. Perhaps it was out of espirit de corps or out of a humble spirit of an officer and a gentleman that Col. Okere reportedly begged Arogundade to release his daughter.

The rear admiral had already adjudicated the case after the young lady, stripped naked and dragged on the ground, was brought before his imperious presence. He had asked his ratings to take Uzoma to a police station to be booked for assaulting men in uniform. If the naval officer was truly in a hurry as to resort to a siren, it would have been understandable.

But he certainly was not rushing off to the Gulf of Guinea to combat invading fleets or to arrest pirates menacing the Niger Delta. Instead, he was merely going from one part of Victoria Island to another, a guest house. The subsequent knowledge that the young lady was his co-officer’s daughter, and could have been his own daughter, as he himself acknowledged, did not move him to apologize.

Miss Okere, in view of the circumstances as reported, is therefore right in insisting that the officer make a public apology, even though I think a mere apology is not enough for a clear case of assault and attempted manslaughter. A judicial commission of inquiry, as some civil and women’s rights groups are now demanding, is most desirable, with terms of reference to encompass the indiscriminate abuse of siren by so many haughty men in public office who harass our lives.

Only a couple of years ago, a naval officer shot and killed an okada rider here in Lagos for no greater offence than that the motorcyclist brushed his new car. Isn’t this preposterous? Is there any other part of the world where this kind of barbaric killing can occur? We do not know what has become of this murder case, but other cases are countless out there of brutal acts inflicted on innocent members of the public by bullying, proud and arrogant military officers and it is high time we started asking them:

Who the hell are you all?
Let us be sincere in addressing the question raised by the thugs in uniform, passing themselves as naval ratings: What is the meaning of a rear admiral, especially in the Nigerian context? Not many of us can identify them or recall any great feats accomplished by the navy or the rest of the Nigerian military, excerpt, of course, one counts as “victory” their conquest of Biafra with British, Russian and other foreign aids.

What we have on record for history and posterity is a list of ignominious deeds, ranging from criminal coups d’etat and shameless looting of public treasury to unspeakable immoralities of which one of their former commanders-in-chief now holds an international record, having run the most corrupt administration in world history and having committed earth-shaking sexual (incestuous) crimes. The pitiable condition of Nigeria today is a consequence of mindless brutalization and rapacious looting of the country by the military. Instead of defending us as they were constituted to do, they held us hostage as a nation since independence and looted our riches. So, for all these iniquities, we are supposed to flee the streets when we hear their sirens blowing.

This is ridiculous! If I may ask, who is afraid of the military? Can they also destroy our souls in Hell, after rendering our nation wretchedly prostrate from their wickedness?
I can understand the deep-seated anger of people like Uzoma Okere. The young lady may seem petulant for grabbing the whip from one of the ratings (and possibly striking him with it) but her courage is an expression of anger that has built up over the years, similar to that of Rosa Parks of the American civil rights fame, who had the guts to say no to black people sitting at the rear of the bus in the 1950s. People like Uzoma and the rest of us (bullied civilians) want to say to the military: We have had enough of you and your baseless arrogance and superiority complex. You are not as good as you believe yourselves to be, since we can clearly see your lack of honour and integrity in our history, past and present.

Are you not the same people that are now being fingered for supplying weapons to Niger Delta militants, stealing from the national armoury?
Our rejection of your vainglory and arrogance of power extends also to those who are not contented in retirement, like Ibrahim Babangida, who every now and then sends out feelers, testing the waters of public opinion to see if we can crown him president, after annulling the best ever election in Nigeria. The Nigerian military should learn to take the back seat, as obtains in other countries. They should not seek the limelight both on the street and on the political stage. The training curriculum of military academies should include strong doses of humility and service (not lordship), to be adapted from the Bible, the Quran and biographies of truly great military heroes.

I seize this opportunity to appeal to the authorities concerned to review, once again, the list of public officials who are entitled to use the siren and escort vehicles. This country belongs to all of us and it is exasperating when motorists are hounded off the streets as if they are interlopers.

It is more so humiliating when the “very important” officials are the very thieves who failed, when they were in power, to develop the cities to enhance easy traffic flows.