The Crocodile Tears Of Nigerians
The Crocodile Tears of Nigerians
There was a report that called Nigerians the happiest people in the world. But, that was an erroneous report. Because, the truth is Nigerians are the most hypocritical people in the world who are very good in the Fine Arts of Pretension, Seduction, Self-Gratification and Temptation. And the recent tragedies of the air disaster in Lisa Village in Ogun State of Nigeria and the death of the wife of the President of Nigeria, Mrs. Stella Obasanjo gave Nigerians the classic stage to act their best melodramatic roles in Hypocrisy as they competed in shedding crocodile tears.
In an open Condolence Letter addressed to the President of Nigeria, the conscience of Nigeria, the erudite legal luminary and human rights activist Dr. Gani Fawehinmi has come out with a classification of the different forms of Crocodile Tears in Nigeria as shed by all the fake and real mourners at the funeral services held for the late First Lady of Nigeria, Mrs. Stella Obasanjo and the 117 victims of the Catastrophic Bellview Airlines plane crash. These are the different forms of Crocodile Tears Dr. Gani Fawehinmi identified as follows:
§ Genuine Tears
§ Ministerial Tears
§ Contract Tears
§ Rotten-Head Tears
§ 2007 Tears
§ Teasing Tears
§ Oil Block Tears
§ Ghana Must Go (GMG) Tears
§ Immunity Tears
§ Pardon Me Tears
§ Face-Showing Tears or Notice Me Tears
§ Business Tears
§ Brixton Prison Tears among other forms of Crocodile Tears Nigerians know how best to shed for all occasions.
Gani Fawehinmi said, “Even Stella will chuckle in her grave.”
For more on these Nigerian Crocodile Tears and other issues raised by Gani Fawehinmi in his open letter to the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, see The Guardian newspaper of Monday, October 31, 2005.
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It is not available in the on line edition of The Guardian, except this summary from The Vanguard.
Stella: Gani Writes Obasanjo On Medicare
Vanguard (Lagos)
NEWS
October 31, 2005
Posted to the web October 31, 2005
Lagos
LAGOS lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, said yesterday the late first lady, Mrs Stella Obasanjo, might still be alive if Nigerian hospitals were well equipped to meet the challenges of modern medicare.
It was also his view that had government paid more attention to the aviation industry, the nation would be spared incessant crashes.
Chief Fawehinmi in a 17-page open letter to President Obasanjo on the death of the first lady and the Bellview Flight 210 crash said government must act immediately to "prevent a repeat of what happened."
On the late first lady, he said: "Whether it is called cosmetic or plastic surgery, I do not see how that could not be dealt with or handled in Nigeria if your government had lifted the health care facilities of this country from the doldrums since you assumed office.
"I know one plastic surgeon. His name is Professor Jubril Oyeneyin. He is one of the best plastic surgeons in Africa. But he has a misfortune. He works with the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba which your regime has virtually abandoned in the last six years. All the medical facilities in the teaching hospital have virtually broken down. All the modular operating theatres have collapsed. Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) is a ghost of its past. What is true of LUTH is true of University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan; University of Nigerian Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Enugu; University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) Benin; Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABTH), and all other teaching hospitals in our country.
"Nigerian has the enormous financial muscle to equip all the existing medical hospitals in the country, build and equip new hospitals all over the country, but that is not the priority of your government. Because of lack of access to modern medicine and modern medical facilities in our country, the rich go abroad while the poor resort to herbalists."
Chief Fawehinmi cited the case of his son, Mohammed, a lawyer, who broke his spinal cord in a motor accident in 2003. He said neither the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Igbobi, Lagos where Muhammed was rushed to nor any teaching hospital in Nigeria had the basic equipment-- Magnetic Resorence Imaging (MRI)-- required to detect the state and extent of the spinal and injury.
He had to be flown to England and the hospital where he was operated upon had 10 of the MRI.
But he added: "In spite of all I have written above, I sincerely sympathetise with you on the death of a woman who became a human rights activist of note, fighting tooth and nail for your release from incarceration.
"A woman who initiated a programme for the children who are physically disadvantaged. Such a woman will be remembered from my own stand point not for being the wife of a president who is anti-masses, but who was herself fighting the cause of the physically challenged."
Recalling his first encounter with the deceased, Chief Fawehinmi said: "I personally attest to her beauty as a woman. I saw her once in my life and that was on Monday, September 29, 1997 at the departure reception arranged by Ambassador Walter Carrington, United States former Ambassador to Nigeria at Ikoyi, Lagos.
On the Bellview Flight 210 crash, Chief Fawehinmi said no such crash had brought "so much trauma, pain, disgust, comical government incompetence, misguided government leadership" since the first plane landed in Nigeria on 27th October 1925."
Continuing, he said: "The rescue operation at Lisa in Ifo was disastrously shabby, as it was impudently shoddy. The site was not secured by the security agencies of your government. All sorts of people and all manners of men and women were allowed to roam about picking anything as souvenir. There was nothing to show that the officials of government at the site had any prior inkling of rescure training.
He then suggested among others:
* Government policy on the type of planes we use in aviation industry, the age of the planes and their airworthy should be revisited immediately;
* The runway lights never go off;
* Control towers should be manned by trained and retrained personnel using modern equipment.
* Government must treat the aviation industry as a very serious one.
Copyright © 2005 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).