What Next For Jere 4 After Justice Sukola’s Demise?
BY STEVEN KEFASON
Around 850 BC, a certain Naboth from Jezreel in Samaria had a vineyard which was in Jezreel, next to the palace of King Ahab. He wanted Naboth’s vineyard to raise a vegetable garden, because it was near his palace. In exchange he offered to give Naboth a better vineyard or even its worth in money, but Naboth turned down the offer. After Queen Jezebel had Naboth framed up and executed, a prophecy of perdition on the house of Ahab was received.
About two thousand eight hundred and fifty years later, a certain Ayuba Barde from Jere, Kagarko Local Government Area of Kaduna State in Nigeria, had a farm in Jere, far away from the palace of the Chief of Jere. The chief was notorious for confiscating lands and attempted to confiscate Barde’s farm for personal use. Unlike Ahab, he didn’t offer him anything in exchange – neither a better farm nor even its worth in monetary value. Like Naboth, though, Barde stood his grounds in defence of his ancestral patrimony, a provoked Chief of Jere, who was not used to being defied, took the laws into his hands by allegedly having Barde shot with a gun.
Barde reacted by putting up self-defence and the Chief of Jere was beaten. Both Barde and the Chief were hospitalised. The first, from bullet wounds; the second, from cuts sustained from bullets because he stood his ground to defend his right to own property and his right to life.
The Chief of Jere got hospitalized because he trespassed on someone else’s property, in addition to attempt to murder his victim, both of which are crimes against the laws of the land. The State which derives its legitimacy from the same law and has among its responsibilities, protection of the same law, now arrested the boys with Barde who acted within the dictates of the law and left free those who should be facing criminal charges for trespassing and attempted murder. The glaring injustice led a breed of sympathetic lawyers to stand in for the boys and somehow the boys were freed on bail. Though the boys were illegally charged and detained by the state government under former Governor Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, due process was followed in ensuring their freedom.
The four boys were later re-arrested and detained by the state government under Governor Nasir el-Rufai, without following due process. They were further sentenced to jail illegally by the Late Justice Bashir Sukola who was known to be favorably disposed to government. In his usual manner the late Justice Sukola subsequently granted them bail on very stringent conditions the boys could not meet, which informed their continued incarceration even as you read this. Such a blatant disregard for the law upon which the government derives its legitimacy is criminalizing the activities of the state government under el-Rufai and making it an enemy of the people they were elected to serve, defend and protect.
As Thomas Jefferson once observed in his famous statement of restraining government with the law so they don’t become legalized criminals, it is incumbent upon all people of goodwill to ride again against this tyranny. Let all conscientious citizens of Kaduna state and beyond, all lovers of justice, rise up in unison and say NO TO INJUSTICE and demand the freedom of the Jere 4. Injustice to one is injustice to all.
For better background information, the Jere chiefdom was established for the Fulani settlers during the reign of Governor Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi. Before its establishment, Jere had been the ancestral home of the Gbagyis and Koros. It was enough for the Fulani to have their chiefdom in someone else’s ancestral lands. To expect the natives to come under the Fulani chief in the natives’ ancestral land is most unthinkable in this 21st century and fifty Seven years after independence. Why should some people have independence at the expense of others in a democratic state where everyone should be equal before the law?
Kefason wrote in from Kaduna.
