In those heady days after the military sacked the inept Shagari administration and started corralling politicians into prisons and giving them jail sentences that even their grandchildren would serve part of, there was this self satisfying feeling that a Daniel has come to judgement.
It was 1984, the politicians were devil incarnates, the soldiers were saints, and if the cost of getting justice served was a loss of a certain degree of fundamental human rights, so be it.
We were young, naive and got carried away by emotions and Hollywood fuelled sense of cowboy justice.
But as time passed, the scales started lifting from our eyes.
First was the selectiveness of the process, then the vindictiveness of the application of justice, followed by the deliberate dehumanization of the accused.
When they ran out of politicians to jail, they moved on to journalists. And when people started mumbling, they started jailing them as well for the audacity to query the gods in power who were infallible.
As young as we were, things were not adding up, especially when people were being jailed 200 years for funding political parties, while others were kept under house arrest after overseeing the biggest heist in Nigerian history as of then.
Luckly that government was booted out after twenty months, and the SSS, which was the instrument of torture was rebranded.
First forward thirty one years, and we are watching a reboot of that bad movie again.
First is to bombard us with fantastic amount of money stolen, this would now be used to hold these people indefinitely. And while the media trial is going on, the DSS.as the SSS is now called, became a super agency above the law, above the courts and above common human decency.
Unfortunately, just like in 1984, the head of the department is from the same place as the president, and just like 1984, ignores court pronouncements with ignoble contempt that can only be as a result of a presidential cover.
This is not about corruption. It is about the rule of law. If you have a case, go to court. But how do you get convictions when you regularly flout the orders of the same courts? and the next thing is to now create extra judicial tribunals to try corruption cases with a mandate to jail every accused for a hundred years, because the regular courts are 'compromised'.
The signs are ominous. We all agree that corruption has brought our country to her knees and that people must pay.
But the consistent attempt by the DSS to undermine the judicial system under the guise of fighting corruption is, to me, a sign of a man who sees himself ad the accuser, the prosecutor, the judge and the jury, which itself is the highest form of corruption.
I just pray that this modern adaptation would not end the same way as the 1984 original.
My Ten Kobo.
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