The announcement by the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, Tuesday evening, of the release of former National Security Adviser, Retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki, who has been in detention for the past four years, and Omoyole Sowore, a former Presidential Aspirant, who was also detained for alleged subversive offences, is perhaps, the greatest of this year’s Christmas gift to Nigerians.
The release of the two men on the eve of this year’s Christmas celebrations, synchronizes with the spirit of Christmas, which is the spirit of love, forgiveness and gift. God loves man. He forgives man his sinfulness. He gives man His only begotten Son.
Christmas is when Christians remember the birth of Jesus Christ. It is when they remember what God, in His infinite mercy, and in spite of man’s fallen nature or sinfulness, did for mankind, by giving his only begotten Son to the world, in order that man should have salvation.
Christmas is the celebration of God incarnate, when God took human flesh, came into the world to redeem man from sin and death. For long, man has been in exile, in wilderness, separated from his Creator, because of sin. But God in his infinite mercy decided to send Jesus Christ to the world, to save man from eternal damnation.
The release of Dasuki and Sowore by the federal government this Christmas may therefore be likened to that mercy extended to mankind by God when He sent Jesus Christ to save man from sin and hell fire. We are not concerned as to whether or not Dasuki and Sowore committed offences, for which they are being tried, because it is for the courts to decide. Our concern is for the federal government to obey the rule of law, to comply with court orders, and to always follow due process in dealing with state matters.
We were not happy that in spite of different court rulings ordering for the release of Dasuki, Sowore, and Islamic religious leader, El Zakzaky, the federal government had stuck to its guns and refused to release them, but continued to keep them in detention. This had attracted several criticisms for the administration, both within and outside Nigeria.
Severally, people took to the streets to protest against this blatant refusal to obey court orders. But the government would not budge. Rather, they would send their security agencies to either disperse or gun down these protesters.
Ironically, our President had openly stated that national security (which is subjective), should take precedence over the rule of law, which was why these people were being detained in perpetuity, defying court orders.
This no doubt had portrayed Nigeria, in the eyes of civilized society, as descending to the state of lawlessness, to the Hobbesian state of nature, brutish, the state of war of all against all, when men lived and behaved like lower animals.
There is no doubt that the Nigerian government’s decision to make a volte face by releasing Dasuki and Sowore as Christmas gift to Nigerians, can hardly be divorced from sustained pressures mounted on the administration by both the international community, the Nigerian press, and the civil society organizations in the country.
Globalization has made the world one family, to the extent that what is happening in Nigeria is instantly relayed across the globe. The Nigerian government was having a large dose of negative image, criticisms, which were being reported by the media. As such, the self-appointed police men of the world – the United States of America and some Western European countries, rose to the occasion and showed Nigeria a yellow card. We then began to tremble, never mind the bold face being put up by Lai Mohammed, Femi Adesina, and Garba Shehu.
Let’s hope that this tokenism, the release of Dasuki and Sowore, will to some extent, help to shore up the tottering image of the administration which many people see as fast descending into dictatorship.
