by Portia Emilia Anthony
I want to talk about this for the last time as I have flogged it enough already, but someone just asked me to explain it again after this I would forever hold my peace.
A doughnut has been stolen and no one accepts culpability and the accuser walks into a room full of people and asks, “Who stole my doughnut?”
Suddenly, he sees a man with sugar all around his mouth and he goes , “Ha! That sugar around your mouth suggests that you may have stolen my doughnut.”
Maybe the sugar-coated mouth did steal the doughnut, but without proving that beyond every reasonable doubt, that the sugar from his mouth is from the particular doughnut you are wasting your time. Your belief is pure fallacy and conjecture, as there is no evidence to confirm that it is the particular sugar from the particular doughnut.
The man may have actually stolen and eaten the doughnut, maybe, the very one you are looking for but without proving it with concrete evidence it remains nothing but what you think.
Deziani Alison Madueke, the erstwhile president of OPEC and Petroleum minister in Nigeria has and is still going through such trails on the media. My brother-in-law this evening just convicted her yet again.
Hear him: “But, it is obvious, would she work there and not steal?” I ‘died’ and all effort to educate this graduate fell on deaf ears.
It is so wrong, so unfair, to ascribe a guilty verdict on anyone based on mere conjectures, hear-says, lies, wishes, make-beliefs, witch-hunting based on public perceptions of criminality, oipinions and not backed by 100% cast-iron, water-tight, overwhelming evidence. In fact, in Deziani’s case even circumstantial evidence may not even be admissible.
This woman has not even been charged with any crime but mere hear-say postulated by the biased, uninformed court of Nigeria’s public opinion. Channels TV has convicted her already and has brought some mushroom lawyers to come and ascribe years of imprisonment on her already.
Punch newspaper has also side-tracked by saying that all the stories in the papers were false that only N1.5 million was found in her possession. I really do not understand what is the matter with us.
The last government that she served fell under the hammer because of these sorts of lies and screaming sensational headlines that have completely eroded common sense and the media trials have also blurred the lines between the facts, evidence and falsehood.
This is quite often very damaging on innocent people, what is rather worrisome is the way even educated people whose education is meant to liberate their minds and gives them the freedom to be objective and analytical on issues and yet these are the very ones more guilty in this madness.
Seriously, we should stop this because it has gone too far. That is someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, a wife and sister. They even went as far as clubbing her innocent mother into this without establishing her complicity in all these.
I have shuddered in quietude since I finished this heated argument with my bro-in-law. Some Nigerians are so emotionally unintelligent and to think that these are people one expects to at least be able to think makes me so sad indeed.
I can understand the sentiment behind why Deziani must be brought down but should she not be found guilty of a crime first? We have moved away from 1983, if it was then by now that woman would be languishing and rotting away in jail somewhere without even being asked a question. Thank goodness things are changing and the world is fluxing even Nigeria is.
This makes the judicial process very cumbersome and puts undue pressure on lawyers and the courts to obtain a guilty verdict by every means possible even when there are no evidence to buttress the convictions.
I reiterate again, if Dezaini is found complicit of any crime, please, charge her, take her to the cleaners, try her. If found guilty, jail her but let the law takes it course. Let justice be done and be seen to have been done.
She deserves her day in court.
Honestly, this witch-hunting should stop now, it is getting too much.
Folks use lies, propaganda, falsehood to win elections it would be an utter disservice to this country to want to sustain a government on the same premise.
For now, Deziani is still innocent until a competent court finds her guilty. Enough of this media madness. Mbok..
#PMBStartRulingNigeria.
Portia Emilia Anthony is a lawyer (not an oil marketer). She is a public affairs analyst. Connect with her on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
