Are we better at this too?

Just as we were getting over the shock of the fact that one Lieutenant Odoh, a female military officer working with the Nigerian Military School Zaria, single-handedly orchestrated the chain of events that led to the death of a young student of the school in March, we got confronted with the shameless persecution of a […]

Just as we were getting over the shock of the fact that one Lieutenant Odoh, a female military officer working with the Nigerian Military School Zaria, single-handedly orchestrated the chain of events that led to the death of a young student of the school in March, we got confronted with the shameless persecution of a youth corps member by female officials of the NYSC in Kaduna.
Like in the case of Late Hamza Dan’azumi, whose mysterious death in a school guardroom caused our hearts to bleed and simultaneously swell with outrage at the actions of that corrupt and heartless army officer, we were again forced to ask ourselves whether these were really women, when they embarked on the systematic witch-hunt of a youths corps member, whose sole sin was writing a newspaper article on the dirty state of the Kaduna state NYSC camp.
One can’t help wondering, as one reads Mohammed Haruna’s column on the subject three weeks ago, what happened to these women to make them so hard-hearted? Where is their motherly instinct which by nature makes them want to protect the young? Why are they so blinded by their desire to cover their inadequacies that all they could think about was punishing the young man instead of  addressing the issues he raised?
According to the piece written by my respected senior colleague Mohammed, the youths corps member, Abubakar Idris Usman was a Mass Communications graduate who wanted to practice the skills he learnt in school by reporting on the sorry state of the NYSC camp. His piece was published in The Nation newspaper of November 22nd last year, in the Campus life section of the paper. It was titled ‘In Kaduna, Corps members sleep in the toilet.’
It was a well-researched article which quoted fellow corpers complaining about the situation at the camp, along with ‘a telling picture of a uniformed youth corper sitting beside a bunker bed in a toilet converted into a room, which sought to highlight the plight of the youth corpers at the NYSC camp in the state, as a result of its hosting about 700 more graduates than the previous year’s number.’ Mohammed wrote. To give it some balance, Abubakar quoted not only the corpers who were complaining about their squalid conditions but also the camp director Mrs L.D Mburi, who reportedly complained bitterly about the way female corpers preferred to defecate in polythene bags than use the camp’s toilets.
Additionally, the piece also quoted Kaduna state NYSC coordinator Mrs Victoria Ango telling the Director-General of the NYSC that the abandoned hostel project in the camp will be ready in three weeks time. Unfortunately for Abubakar Idris, all this attempt at professionalism and balance did not save him from the ire of the amazons. His problems began the very day his article was published in the newspaper. He discovered, to his dismay, that not only he who wrote the article but even the fellow corpers he interviewed had been summoned to the office of the state coordinator Mrs Ango. Both Mrs Ango and Mrs Mburi were interested in nothing other than who sponsored him to write such a ‘wicked’ article.  The story of Abubakar’s travails can best be told in the words of Mohammed Haruna, whose column on the issue took the form of a letter to the Director-general of the NYSC. 
‘After a barrage of angry words, he was told that he will make the record as the first corper to be court-martialled. He was given enough time to dress in his uniform for the trial which will take place in Mrs Mburi’s office. On getting to the hostel to dress up he was told that some NYSC staff had been there and had ransacked his bag and taken away his digital camera, jotter and mobile phone. …the trial did not begin till 7pm. It was chaired by Mrs Mburi. Others on the panel included your (NYSC D-G’s) representative, a State Security Service representative, a police representative and a civil defence representative.
According to Abubakar no one questioned the accuracy of the article. Instead the panel’s concern was who sponsoerd him and how he was able to file the article when he was supposed to be on camp; a silly question, if you ask me in this digital age of the ubiquitous internet. The panel, he said, also wondered if he thought he could fight government. And so on and so forth.
All three (corpers) apologised profusely for the embarrassment they said the article must have caused the state NYSC authorities and pleaded for clemency. Abubakar said he tried to explain to the panel that he meant no harm and was only practising what he was taught about the watchdog role of a journalist…. The panel was unimpressed, instead, at the end of the trial at 9pm, it sentenced the other two to severe drill. On his part as the main culprit, he was sentenced to the same drill, his phone seized and was told he will get a three month extension of his national service without pay.
The following day his father, Danjuma Yaro, appeared on the camp in the morning at the summons of NYSC authorities. Danjuma went along with one of the most respected elders of our neighbourhood, Sheikh Namadi. Both pleaded for clemency for Abubakar. Their pleas fell on deaf ears. Abubakar will be forgiven all right, she said, provided he published an advert in three national newspapres retracting his article. Anyone who knows what newspaper adverts cost, would agree that this is impossible for anyone on a corper’s relatively miserable allowance. Worse it will amount to professional suicide for any journalist to retract a piece whose accuracy and fairness was never in question….’
The reader must be wondering by now why there was this much fuss over a newspaper article that did not fabricate but rather stated the facts as they were. If the NYSC officials had felt indicted by the young man’s opinion piece because it said a lot about the way the camp was being maintained, then they ought to have made a conscious decision to set things right before another batch of corpers came round to see things the way others did. But to set out to persecute Abubakar in order to silence him is totally unacceptable in these days of freedom of expression.
Anyway the young man paid dearly in terms of delayed posting, query on a false charge and finally redeployment to Delta state ‘on health grounds’ when in actual fact he was seeking a posting closer home in order to have easy access to his hepatitis treatment. When Abubakar wrote to protest his Delta State posting he was told he had been posted there as punishment for his malicious article in The Nation.This letter was signed by the state coordinator herself Mrs Ango,claiming to be acting on the directive of the NYSC D-G himself.
It is doubly unfortunate that women in positions of authority are now finding and capitalising on the slightest excuses to play tough and high-handed with young youth, who represent our future. Which brings us back to my earlier assertion that women seem to be striving hard to be better than men in negative ways.
I hope the authorities in charge will do all that is necessary to ensure justice for the two young men who have fallen victim to hard-hearted women in authority. One, Hamza Dan’azumi paid with his life for the actions of Lt-Col Odoh, the other Abubakar Idris Usman is having a threatened future over  the negative actions of Mrs Mburi and Mrs Ango, both Kaduna State NYSC officials.