The word law reminds me of the popular saying that, where there is no law, there is no sin. Nigeria is documentarily lawful but behaviourally lawless. But you will want to ask yourself, who are those meant to enforce the law' Why is the law not enforced' And who are the lawbreakers' There are three arms of government as we all know and they are concerned with the initiation, making and enforcing the law: They are the executive, legislature and the judiciary, respectively.Let us start with the simplest of them all which deals with common rules that are meant to be obeyed on our streets on a daily basis. Get up in the morning and walk down the road, if you are allowed to conduct a survey, you will find that many drivers on the road do not have complete particulars, some even drive without licence. Worst still, some have expired licence. The questions is, what are they doing on the road' A probable answer is they are on the road because they can buy the law backing these offence just with N20; I will not be justified not to mention the effort of the Inspector-General of Police who recently made laws to correct that. One of them is removing all unnecessary roadblocks. Though we can't say this has been totally eradicated, it has been drastically reduced. Nigeria is being referred to as the Giant of Africa, but let us for a moment just imagine we have lost our place of reckoning in Africa. If indeed you are opportune to travel to our neighbourig countries like Ivory Coast, Benin Republic, Ghana, etc, one would be surprised to know that they are not that lawless. Their traffic laws are intact; they can neither be bought over nor compromise.There might be a lot of things responsible for this; which may range from embedded corruption that has eaten deep into the society to the poor welfare conditions of our law enforcement agents. But there is no excuse for failure; Nigeria celebrated her 51st anniversary last year October, one more year will be added again this coming October. Another factor is their influence and greatness cannot be taken for granted. Should we then say that Nigeria as a country is not fit to occupy the place we are right now' Another aspect which gives me serious concern is the arrest of innocent Nigerian when an offence is committed. The criminals escape and the helpless wonderers loitering the area are quizzed. And Let's assume you commit an offence and you are arrested, you are liable to be freed if you are influential or you have someone who is. What about our politicians, is it not an issue of the higher your status the lower the sentence you get for your crime. As if that is not enough, some are above the law and so are not punished when they go against the law. Just take a look at the current state of lawlessness going on; the unfortunate perpetuation of violent crimes in the country and total disregard for human lives. But there is just one question I ask myself, are there no sponsors or financiers of Boko Haram' Someone, please tell me. Arresting the members alone will be like cutting a tree from its branch, as any reasonable person surely knows the tree can never die. It's no longer a concealed truth that Boko Haram is political. Today, the prisons are overfilled with people who are awaiting trials for many years running, some are on death list waiting to be executed. Majority of these people were either implicated or innocently detained. Recently, there was the case of a man in Ibadan who was arrested and detained for several years after being sentenced to death for a crime he knew nothing of. He bears the same last name with an accused robber, the culprits themselves claimed the man knew nothing; but he was not released. He spent about 17 years in prison custody. There are many cases like this, but little or no attention is payed to them; they are not influential, neither do such victims have people who can fight for them. The same country where innocent people are detained unlawfully is where people are not punished for the crime they commit: God help Nigeria.'Olawuni can be reached via tolu86olawuni@yahoo.co.uk
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