Opinion: Resilience [Forging Ahead] Part XXXIII – By Bashorun J.K. Randle

The day commenced with the flashing of the television station’s mission statement over and over again. It was in English (with American translation !!):

“We beam the light on dark places”.

Anyway, what followed were early morning prayers, meditation, yoga, aerobics and diet tips for those who are victims of “underlying issues” such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension and asthma. There was no reference to bad breath, body odour or hair growing in the wrong places. There was a pause to deliver the warning by the Surgeon-General:

“Wear a mask; wash your hands; keep social distance and avoid crowds – especially in bars, restaurants and beaches.”

There was no mention whatever of COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead, what followed were the haunting lyrics of “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I’m begging of you please don’t take my man Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don’t take him just because you can

Your beauty is beyond compare With flaming locks of auburn hair

With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green Your smile is like a breath of spring

Your voice is soft like summer rain And I cannot compete with you Jolene

He talks about you in his sleep

And there’s nothing I can do to keep From crying when he calls your name Jolene

And I can easily understand

How you could easily take my man

But you don’t know what he means to me Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I’m begging of you please don’t take my man

 

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don’t take him just because you can

You could have your choice of men But I could never love again

He’s the only one for me Jolene

I had to have this talk with you My happiness depends on you And whatever you decide to do Jolene

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

I’m begging of you please don’t take my man Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

Please don’t take him even though you can Jolene, Jolene

 Before the end of the song, the camera switched to the riveting documentary on 99-year-old Judy Parsons of the United States who was a navy Code-breaker during the Second World War (1939 to 1945):

“Judy Parsons is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who worked as a codebreaker for the US Navy during World War II.

One of those all time great women is Judy Parsons, a 99-year-old former Navy lieutenant and school teacher now living in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

“There’s a bit of a misnomer, in that Bletchley Park is often discussed as the primary center where German codes and ciphers were being broken down,” said Cmrd. David Kohnen, a historian at the Naval War College. “In fact, after 1943, most of that work was being done in Washington, DC, at Nebraska Avenue by WAVES like Judy.”

Today, Parsons is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

But back in 1942, she was a recent graduate of the Carnegie Institute of Technology — now Carnegie Mellon University — eager to do her part to help the country.

Sexism is still a very real impediment facing women in workplaces of all kinds — including the military — and many of the barriers blocking women from pursuing their careers stood even taller at the time of WWII.

While women played critical roles to support US Armed Forces and keep the economy humming in World War I, World War II was a game changer for women in military service.

In the summer of 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Navy Women’s Reserve Act, creating a new division of the US Navy known as the WAVES — Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service — and clearing a path for women to play a larger role in the Navy than ever before.

After graduation, Parsons — who went by her maiden name Potter at the time — took a job with the Army’s Ordnance Department, where she worked to supply US forces with ammunition.

But one day, something in the newspaper caught her eye: The Navy was accepting women volunteers to attend its officer training school.

“That appealed to me a great deal, so I applied and I was accepted,” Parsons said.

After completing her officer training in 1943, Parsons was sent to Washington, where she was brought to a seminary campus on Nebraska Avenue that the Navy had converted into a military intelligence headquarters.

When she arrived, Parsons and the other WAVES were asked a series of questions to determine their next assignment.

“We were shuffled into the chapel and someone came in there and said ‘Does anyone know German?'” said Parsons. “And I said, ‘Well, I took two years in high school.'”

That was apparently all the Navy needed to hear.

Parsons was assigned to OP-20-G, a codebreaking division within the Navy’s Office of Communications focused on unraveling encrypted messages sent by German forces.

The work she was assigned to was top-secret.

And from the start, it was impressed on her and the other WAVES of OP- 20-G that they’d be “hung at the gallows” if they ever spoke about what their job entailed, Parsons said.

It’s a promise she says she kept for decades — never once discussing the work she did with her roommates, friends, or even her husband, until discovering in the 1990s that it had been declassified.

WAVES during WWII are shown at the Naval Communications Annex on Nebraska Avenue in Washington working with a Bombe machine.

Intercepted German messages were run through the massive machines, allowing analysts to eventually break the code and decipher the message.

Parsons said people assumed she was working as a glorified secretary. Not being able to tell them otherwise was difficult.

“They’d say ‘What do you do?’ and I’d say, ‘Well, I have a desk job.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, that’s what we thought women would get.’ And that was hard because I couldn’t talk about it.”

Still, Parsons felt that keeping quiet helped dispel at least some of the myths that had been used to keep women from serving their country.

“The top bananas said that women couldn’t keep a secret, and we showed them that we could.”

For Parsons and the others in OP-20-G, their battles were fought not with guns and artillery, but with code. And their primary foe was the Enigma machine — the notorious encryption device used by the Nazis to conceal and communicate their war plans.

Parsons’ focus was on deciphering messages sent to U-boats, the German submarines that wreaked havoc on Allied shipping channels.

But breaking the Nazi codes was complex and tedious work, and doing so required the help of machines of their own called Bombes.

The Bombe machine was a hulking mass of rotors and wires, each standing 7 feet tall and weighing around 5,000 pounds. Dozens of them were installed at the Nebraska Avenue complex to help with codebreaking, and Parsons and fellow WAVES kept them humming 24 hours a day.

Once a code was cracked and a message revealed, the information was relayed to others in the Navy chain of command, where it was used to locate and, eventually, target enemy submarines.

Not all of the messages they decrypted were about war. Embedded in the traffic were personal messages — happy birthdays, death, even birth notices.

Through the messages that were revealed, Parsons said she felt she got to know many of the U-boat skippers and their families in a way that humanized them. When they were eventually targeted or killed, she says she couldn’t help but feel sadness.

“This one man was so happy because finally (he and his wife) had a little boy, and it wasn’t a week later that his submarine was sunk.” Parsons said. “I felt so bad about that because he’ll never know his father.”

By the end of the war, 95 German U-boats were sunk or captured, in large part thanks to intelligence revealed by the WAVES of OP-20-G.

And to this day, Kohnen says the story of OP-20-G is one of the most important yet little-known secrets of World War II.

“The story of Nebraska Avenue is really yet to be told,” said Kohnen. ” … in many respects we should consider Nebraska Avenue the US Navy’s Bletchley Park.”

Then came the unmistakable voice of the late President of Nigeria (2007 to 2010), Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

“There is plenty of room at the bottom because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity.”

And Robert Frost (1874 to 1963)

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.”

It was left to Denis Waitley (1933 – 2019) to provide the tonic for the rest of the morning:

“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.”

Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.”

What followed was the front page report of “Saturday Punch” of 1^st August 2020.

Headline: “NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION (NNPC) REPLIES WHISTLE BLOWER, DENIES 48- MILLION – BARREL-OIL THEFT”

(NNPC BLOWS THE WHISTLE ON WHISTLE BLOWER !!)

“The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has denied the claim of 48 million barrels of crude oil allegedly stolen from Nigeria and stored in China in 2015.

The denial is contained in the corporation’s reply to a letter by a firm, Samano Sa De CV and its officials – Ramirez and Jose Salazar Tinajero – who had demanded $125m as compensation for providing information about the alleged theft of the crude oil.

NNPC’s letter signed by the corporation’s lawyer, Mr Kehinde Ogunwumiju (SAN) of Afe Babalola & Co., was dated July 30, 2020 and addressed to Samano Sa De CV’s counsel, Mr Gboyega Oyewole (SAN).

Ogunwumiju stated that the firm’s claim in its letter dated July 23, 2020 sent to the NNPC was “not only unfounded but frivolous”.

He described the firm’s claim as part of “a gold-digging scheme” aimed at “blackmailing and extorting money from our client and the Federal Government of Nigeria”.

The NNPC’s lawyer stated, “We wish to emphatically and unequivocally state for the record that our client vehemently denies your client’s claim that it provided any information to NNPC or the Federal Government of Nigeria which information led to the identification and/or recovery of 48 million barrels of stolen Nigerian Bonny Light Crude Oil stored in the People’s Republic of China.

Accordingly, it is our client’s position that your client is not entitled to the payment of five per cent of the value of the allegedly stolen crude or any amount whatsoever as compensation for information it purportedly gave to the Federal Government of Nigeria in respect of the said stolen crude stored in the People’s Republic of China.”

Ogunwumiju stated that Samano had first contacted NNPC sometime in 2015, alleging that it had been approached by an unnamed group in China to buy 48 million barrels of stolen Nigerian Crude Oil (Bonny Light Grade).

He stated that the firm claimed that the stolen crude oil was shipped out of Nigeria before the Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) administration, and requested it be allowed to buy it upon its recovery as compensation for sharing the information with the Federal Government.

He stated that the NNPC had doubted the veracity of the claim of the stolen 48 million barrels of oil from the outset, as “earlier claims made to the Federal Government by other entities in respect of stolen Nigerian crude oil stored in China turned out to be false”.

He also stated that “it was impossible to ship 48 million barrels of crude oil from Nigeria to China without any record or trace of same” especially because, “as of 2015, the daily production of crude ml in Nigeria was below 1.6 million barrels.”

Ogunwumiju added, “Therefore, 48 million barrels of crude oil would have been the total production capacity of the whole country for a month.

It is simply impossible that one-month crude oil production would disappear without any record or trace.”

According to him, notwithstanding the firm’s failure to provide evidence to support its claims, “relevant officials of the government were mandated to proceed to China to verify the claims of the existence of the said stolen Nigerian crude oil.”

He stated, “The said delegation discovered that the Samao’s claim was false and baseless. Consequently, the government severed communications with the syndicate.

Miffed by this, Messrs Ramirez and Jose Salazar Tinajero, acting as agents of Samao, resorted to blackmail and intimidation of key officials of the government and the NNPC, threatening to make public information that the said 48 million barrels of oil had been recovered, sold and the proceeds therefrom, looted by some government officials and the NNPC when it was aware that this was untrue.

They also demanded $125,000,000 from the said government officials, which was conveniently and rightfully ignored.

Thereafter, NNPC reported this case of attempted blackmail to the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force.”

He stated that upon investigation it was discovered that Ramirez had been charged with separate and unconnected criminal charges at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja in charge No: FCT/HC/CR/147/2016 and the Federal High Court, Lagos in Charge No: ID/2763/2016.

He added, “Both charges were preferred against Mr Ramirez by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for economic and financial crimes.

The said Mr Ramirez and his cohorts have since been charged to several courts in Nigeria for criminal offences ranging from fraud, forgery, extortion, blackmail, conspiracy, etc.

The charge which relates to the attempt to fleece the Federal Government and NNPC is Charge No.: FCT/HC/BU/CR/134/2019 between the Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Marco Antonio Ramirez and four others pending before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.

But for the due diligence of the management of the NNPC, the Federal Government would have lost a whopping sum of $125,000,000.

The NNPC is currently consulting its lawyers Afe Babalola & Co in a bid to take corresponding legal action(s) against the said syndicate for damages done to its reputation and its officials as a result of the false publications by the syndicate.”

During the intermission that followed, the late President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe (1987 to 2017) spoke from the grave:

“To applaud a politician because he had built a school, hospital or road using public money ………is the same as congratulating an ATM machine for giving you your money.”

Next came Dr. Nelson Mandela:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear; but the triumph over it.”

Just when we thought the last word belonged to Oprah Winfrey:

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”

all hell broke loose on account of the excerpt from the front page

report of “Daily Trust” newspaper of June 13, 2020.

Headline: “A YEAR UNDER RAPIST’S RULE:

KANO COMMUNITY RECOUNTS TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE.”

“Halima Sani (not real name), 95, was deep asleep when she was awoken by the sound of strange movement in her room.

Within a twinkle of an eye, the intruder grasped her neck, his elbows digging into her chest. Unknown to her, the intruder was both a thief and a rapist. As she struggled to free herself, he commanded her to give him money.

“The first thing I did when I heard the strange movement was to recite Inna lillahi wa’inna ilaihir raji’uun (Indeed, we are from Allah and to Him we shall certainly return),” Halima narrated.

“He then began hurling insults at me, saying that he will kill me. I said to him that my life is not in his hands, but in Allah’s. He continued to ask for money while his hands and elbows remained firmly on my neck and chest.

I told him I didn’t have money and soon lost consciousness because I couldn’t withstand the struggle.

I did not wake up until the following morning. As my neighbours didn’t see me for the early morning prayers, they checked my room and found me mutilated. I told them what happened to me.

They were the ones who used hot water to treat my private part. I was damaged like a woman who just gave birth. Some of my ribs were dislocated. “

Halima did not regain full consciousness for two weeks. It was discovered that she had blood clot in her eyes, while her nose continuously bled during the two-week treatment, she told Daily Trust Saturday.

She said: “Up till now I have not fully recovered, weeks after the incident.

“He entered my house the Thursday before curfew was declared in Kano State.

We are grateful to Allah that this man was caught.

Before this time, we were living in fear.

Women were really traumatised by the activities of this criminal, because nobody knew who the next victim would be.”

Aside married women, girls and children, even prostitutes were victims of the notorious rapist.”

In a chat, some prostitutes expressed their happiness about his arrest and showered praises on vigilantes who arrested him.

One of them who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “Even if I am a commercial sex worker, I wouldn’t want anyone to rape me, because I don’t know the person’s identity.

I was his victim. But even if I had said it, nobody would have taken me seriously because that is what I do for a living. We are happy because the town is free now. We can go about our normal trade.”

“Tradition and fear of stigma made most of the rapist’s victims remain quiet.

What he usually does,” one said, “was to strip himself naked at any available uncompleted building outside the town. He would move into the town naked.

One fateful day at about 1:30am, I saw him through my window. That is the only thing I can remember. The rest is history.”

The serial rapist, however, revealed how he operated. In an audio made available to Daily Trust Saturday by the Kwanar Dangora vigilantes, he gave his name as Muhammadu Zhul-Falalu Alfa, an indigene of Kankia, Katsina State who moved to Kwanar Dangora in search of livelihood.

“My father was born in Tofa, Kano State, but he relocated to Katsina. Business brought me to Kwanar Dangora and I also enrolled myself in a school. I trade in groundnuts. I was arrested when I came out at night to rape women.

I was caught naked because I removed my clothes in Dantala’s house (Dantala is the owner of the house where the rapist went to rape his wife).

What I usually do is remove my clothes, because it makes it easier to rape without much stress. I was about to enter the house when somebody flashed me with a torchlight,” Alfa said.

Alfa, 32, said he could not count the number of houses he entered in Kwana Dangora, but put the number of his victims at not less than 40 women. He admitted that he raped the 95-year-old woman and also stole from his victims.”

Sani Sama’ila alias Sani Jos is the Secretary of Kwanar Dangora Vigilante Group and also doubles as the Public Relations Officer of the Community Policing Unit of the town. He said the notorious rapist was caught by his team when they were on patrol at Anguwan Yelwa area of the town.

“He was arrested at Gidan Kwana after he entered Malam Hamza Mai Lemu’s house,” Sani Jos said.

“I was leading the vigilante team when one of us saw him. We chased him and were able to track him. The arrest was made at about 2am, and to assure residents that their nightmare had been captured, we tied him to a pole until the following morning for people to see him.

“He was later transferred to the Kano State Police Command’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) after we had taken him to our chief.

The police commended our effort. Investigation is still on, but the major challenge is for the victims to come out in the open and testify. However, the rapist has confessed to raping at least 40 women.”

Sani Jos said Kwanar Dangora heaved a sigh of relief over the arrest of Alfa, the rapist. He was such a terror that women nicknamed him Mai Skirt (man with skirt).

“He told us that he was once married but divorced his wife. He has terrorised the community for a year and once entered my house, but before I could come out from my room, he scaled the fence. Despite the hot chase, I couldn’t catch him,” he said.

“We were however lucky to arrest him on Thursday, June 4, 2020. Our major concern was his health.

“We were concerned that if he happened to be a carrier of any transmittable disease, it meant he was spreading it to many innocent citizens who would not come out to reveal that they were raped.

We are appealing to our people to come out and narrate their experiences in order to help curtail the menace. Doing this would assist the prosecution of the culprits.”

The Traditional Chief of Kwanar Dangora, Alhaji Ahmadu Ya’u, expressed his appreciation to the vigilantes for the arrest, saying that they would encourage victims to cooperate with the police in order to have evidence and hence witnesses for the prosecution of Alfa.

Kano State’s Police Command spokesperson confirmed that after investigation, the suspect would be taken to court for prosecution.

In a related incident, in a small settlement called Ma’ai, few kilometres north of Dutse, Jigawa State capital, a 12-year-old girl was allegedly serially raped by 12 persons at different times.

This revelation came on Monday, May 30, 2020 when one of the suspects, Alhaji Muhammad Zuwai, was apprehended by some good Samaritans at Limawa market after he was said to have raped the girl.

Confirming the development, the Police Public Relations Officer, SP Abdul Jinjiri, said the suspects raped the minor on different occasions. Preliminary investigations indicated that the suspects lured the girl with money between N20 and N50 whenever they intended to have sex with her.

During the course of investigation, the statement of the victim led to the arrest of the eleven other suspects who are currently facing trial.

Jinjiri said: “Zuwai was handed over to the police together with the girl and in the course of investigation the girl confessed to have had sexual intercourse with eleven others apart from Zuwai.

Daily Trust Saturday visited the family to ascertain the condition of the victim’s health. Her mother, Raliya Ibrahim said the girl was in a stable condition as she was under medication.

“She was taken to the hospital when the incident happened, was given drugs and also sits in warm water as well,” Raliya explained.

“She was examined to see whether she was carrying any ailment or pregnancy, but the results all came out negative.”

On whether, as a mother, Raliya had noticed any suspicious behaviour by her daughter throughout the period in which the incident had been taking place, she said there was no sign that her daughter was subjected to any such act, but advised parents to be very observant of their children’s movements.

When asked what kind of punishment should be given to the suspected perpetrators of the act if found guilty, Raliya said, “Nothing. We have forgiven them. We don’t want any punishment for them. We leave everything to Allah.”

Some residents of Ma’ai shared their view on the incident and the persons involved. A resident who didn’t want his name mentioned, said, “among the persons she mentioned, there is a boy of not more than 13 years, two others of 16 and 17, and then one is about 25 years, all of  whom are not married. The rest of them are married men, most of whom have wives and children. Even the last man who was caught on the Limawa market day has two wives and about nine children.”

The source added that most of them were farmers by occupation, with one a firewood seller and another who installs satellite receivers as a means of livelihood.

‘“From what we heard, the incident has been taking place for the last three years, so the girl was used to it and we don’t know whether her parents were aware and decided to let it be or not,” he said.

Another resident, Ma’aruf A. Mansur, said residents of Ma’ai were still in shock over the incident. “None of those arrested has a bad record of either adultery or any other form of crime.

So, we believe it’s not true and consider this as a trial from God, and we are with them in our prayers that the truth shall prevail and they will be free at last,” he said.

In his opinion, Malam Auwalu Abdu, said “Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un! This is an incident that involved innocent people and we are very disturbed that it is happening this way. But we thank God that whatever happened, authorities handling the matter are upright enough to do what is right.

We know it is something that has to go through different stages and we are confident that at the end, they will do the needful to ensure that all the innocent ones are free and the culprits, if any at all, will be punished.

Our major concern is the number of people implicated in the case, which surprised everyone. We are sure that it was done out of enmity and hatred against most or all of them, and by the grace of God, the truth shall prevail at last,’ he said.

However, there were reports that the residents of Ma’ai were doing all they could to resolve the problem out of court through their traditional rulers.

When contacted, the District Head of Dutse, Alhaji Jamilu Basiru Sanusi, Turakin Dutse, confirmed the development, but said the issue could not be resolved without letting the law take its course.

“It is both against our religion and the laws of the land, so as leaders, we cannot let it go like that. It has to be thoroughly investigated and the culprits will be punished according to the law, so that it will serve as deterrent to others.

We asked them to report to the police and then we informed the state headquarters of the police which eventually took over the case. I have also warned the ward and village heads not to interfere in the case and allow the investigators to do their work, since it is a criminal case and not just a civil issue that we can mediate in,” he said.

A public commentator in Jigawa State, Hon. Yusuf Maigari, linked the rising cases of rape to a number of factors, which included what he called the psychological perception of potential rapists, opportunities given to rapists and congestion, among others.

“This psychological perception, which you could call a kinky sexual behaviour, could be sociopathic or psychopathic as the rapist could kill in certain circumstances.

The opportunity has to do, sometimes, with the negligence of the wards or parents of the victims, when the victim goes carelessly close to the rapist who is looking for an opportunity.

In terms of congestion, this could happen when people are congested, say for instance in a refugee camp. There is the tendency for incest or rape cases to occur,” he said.

With regard to the peculiarities of Jigawa State in the incident, Hon. Maigari said it has to do with poverty and unemployment among the youth.

“An idle mind breeds anti-social behaviour. So if young people are not having enough to get married and be able to satisfy their urges, then there is tendency for rape to occur.

Parents also abandon their children without adequate care. Peer influence alone could do a great deal of harm in that case. So parents must be extra watchful of their wards,” he added and suggested that punishments for rape must be commensurate with the level of crime committed.

The outrage from viewers was of hurricane dimensions. It was a huge blow to the image and reputation of Nigeria.

Bashorun J.K. Randle is a former President of the Institute of the Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and former Chairman of KPMG Nigeria and Africa Region.

He is currently the Chairman, JK Randle Professional Services

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