The Warring Spirit Of Osamuyiwa Aikpitanyi.

On the fateful day Osamuyiwa Aikpitanyi was bundled on to a plane, bound and gagged and with a shroud draped over his head, there was a lady on board who took the whole shenanigan in with an unsettling detachment that could have been interpreted by the unwary as aiding and abetting either as a principal or an accessory. It was not the portion of this lady to directly intervene seeing that she herself was visually impaired and had to wear a blindfold to hide two festering sores that once perhaps were eyes, but her heart went out to Osamuyiwa to reassure him that what goes around comes around. His captors, Zapatero's minions were too enthralled with keeping an evil eye on the immobilized body of their victim to ever notice that this lady held a double-edged sword in her right hand and a pair of scales in the left. Or, maybe, they too, had eyes, but couldn't see like the majority of men, who when pregnant with iniquity, never, for once, think that the evils that they do will live after them.
The lady in question did wonder why animals could be referred to as souls without reason and human beings as reasoning souls even though the former acted with more integrity and greater consistency than the latter. And here, right under her nose, a soul was being extinguished by fellow-creatures similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine for the simple reason that this soul had ventured to improve his lot and that of his extended family in a dangerously jagged territory where the native sharks luxuriated in feasting on harmless African tilapias.
What manner of woman would be armed with a weapon that has the capability of fairly and equally dividing a child between two female claimants and yet suffers the starving of the child to death before justice is dispensed? Wouldn't she love to serve and defend the defenceless and give a voice to the gagged and voiceless even if collateral damage has to be incurred in the process? Somebody would say the ways of the Lord are verily mysterious, but I tell you, Lady Justice acts only after the commission of a crime. And when she swings into action,she forswears disputes over weight and scales and weighers knowing full well that a hungry man is an angry woman. He is hungry for justice; she is angry at injustice. But would justice delayed not mean justice denied?
The notion of metaphysical guilt is antithetical to a miscarriage of justice inasmuch as it goes the whole hog to embrace retributive and restorative justice. In The Question of German Guilt, Karl Jaspers argues that metaphysical guilt can be distributed to all members of a community who stand by while their fellows produce harm, e.g. murder Jews. For a very long time and within living memory, Spain has emerged as one of the most liberal states in Europe in terms of the granting of residence permit to immigrants. What then was the offence committed by Muyiwa that he had to be tied with a rope like a sheep being led to the slaughter, burkaed like a Pakistani woman in the sweltering summer heat, and buccally suppressed like a terror hostage? Little wonder then that he gave up the ghost. Official cause of death: heart attack.
A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of negrophobia, disguised as xenophobia. The race card is being played across the continent from Austria through Germany, Belgium, Denmark,Italy, Netherland to Switzerland, with the consent and overwhelming support of majority of the populace. The prejudice exhibited by the ultra-nationalist parties of these countries and others in hysteria and hate is the prejudice common to most Europeans, which deep in their hearts they feel, but culture and refinement prevent many from exhibiting any trace of it. But it is indeed astonishing that no one has taken the pains to pinpoint in what ways African immigrants constitute economic parasites. Is it not as tax paying dishwashers and janitors?
Thus says the Lord: for three transgressions of Spain and for four. I will not revoke the punishment; because he pursued his brother with the sword, and cast off all pity, and his anger tore perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever. So I will send a fire upon the house of Zapatero and it shall devour the strongholds of Madrid. I will cut off the inhabitants from Valencia, Sevilla and Barcelona, says the Lord God.
When God proposes a course of action, Lady Justice disposes of that course of action proposed by God because she is God's battle axe. Will any earthly power be therefore strong enough to resist the conscious efforts by divine forces to redress the wrongs done to the honour and dignity of the black man? On July 2, not quite up to a month after the murder of Osamuyiwa Aikpitanyi, seven Spanish tourists were killed in Yemen when an apparent suicide bomber linked to Al-Qaeda rammed a car packed with explosives into their convoy. Even though pity did twine me like a snake on hearing that news, I couldn't help but see the whole tragedy as divine providence. I am not saying that Nigerians carried out that attack, but the same pains that Africans in the diaspora and especially the Aikpitanyi family felt could never be less grave than what the family and government of the Spanish victims felt. That is if the government is not conscienceless.
In the wake of Osamuyiwa's murder and the ripples it has generated all over the world, it would amount to sheer foolhardiness for some countries to still want to pursue a draconian policy on immigration. The European Union is already trying to forge a common policy which I hope will highlight the need to peacefully deport those they label aliens to their country of origin in one piece. I was lucky enough to make it home in one piece in 1992 after being removed from the holding cell in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and placed on board a KLM flight to Lagos. But here I am today in Germany as legal as any alien can be and paying my tax as a janitor and dishwasher. Or is my case that of the weakling who thinks himself good because he has no claws? La historia me absolvera.
Whatever doesn't destroy a man makes him stronger, and whatever destroys a man makes his survivors wiser. Osamuyiwa Aikpitanyi, brave-hearted warrior that you were; your warring spirit lives on in us your brothers and sisters, your kith and kin, your friends and fans, your mourners and the rejoicers in your transubstantiation. The lady who sat by your side on June 9 has vowed to leave no stone unturned in making sure that your killers are brought to book. Requiscat in Pace.

.