Current trending news reports indicate that Senator Melaye has been whisked away by masked men from the custody of the Police hospital in Abuja and taken to an unknown destination.
There are also pictures in the social media depicting the senator to have been dumped in an open compound wherein he was shown sleeping on the ground, helplessly unattended to except by empty bottles of water and a bottle of ground nut. Does that kind of treatment befit any Nigerian citizen who is presumed to be innocent of crime and has been in police custody, claiming a health challenge?
Wait a minute! What if Senator Dino Melaye were to die from these manhandling? Would something dawn on us?
There is a dark and heavy cloud that seems to have enveloped the sociosphere of our dear country at this moment.
Freedom of thought and liberty that were common to political opinion holders in different political divides as they once were, have suddenly vanished while the consciences of many have become insensate from the inebriation that comes from living in denial of the truth.
That many Nigerians are carrying on, normally and in disunity, in the midst of a progressive degradation of the puny freedom and hope we once enjoyed, can only justify the suspicion that something quite sinister and foreboding, now has a grip on Nigeria. We must therefore pray!
Political power like Vino often gets a man drunken. Anyone drunken with wine has less restraint in telling the truth, even the truth about himself and about his intentions. Anyone who is drunken with the force of political power also has less restraint in its use until it leads to disgrace.
I urge the current holders of the force of State political power to show some restraint in order to preserve the polity. Such restraint can only be established when a mighty government subjects itself to the restraint and confines of law.
The present treatment of Senator Melaye lies the truth about how much value we place on the rights of a Nigerian citizen. Therefore, like Vino, in Dino, veritas.
Frank Tietie
Executive Director,
Citizens Advocacy for Social & Economic Rights (CASER)
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