WELL, you must have known the story. This incident happened on March 10,1985 and the guy tied to the stake waiting for the bullets was a young Nigerian man called, *Bartholomew Owoh*, an Igboman by tribe.
A classical case of sublime equanimity, it takes a transcendental accomplishment for a man who is on the throes of death to be able to beam such a disarming laugh. Perhaps, his understanding that he was leaving this plane of filth to that of extreme ataraxis, of bliss in absolute maximum, had given him such impetus!
Yes, the government of his country had decided to waste him for purported drug trafficking, an offense that was non-existent at the time he “committed the Crime”! When he was caught, and to make sure he was put to death, the Tyrannical Contraption who acted as the authority then, created a non-existent law and retroacted the law so that the young man could be captured in the dragnet!
But, the then outspoken and fiery Archbishop of Lagos Metropolitan See, Anthony Cardinal Olubumi Okojie christened the mean act as an “Overkill”!
In his lamentation at the stake, Mr Owoh said: ” if I knew that this action would lead to my death, I wouldn’t have involved myself”!
These condemnations and outcries made no sense to the Honchos at the helm and Mr. Bartho and his gang got their hearts busted at the stakes!
But, the courage and equanimity of the young man in the face of extreme and severe danger, still remains a study in bravado!
Not yet done, years later, the same Provincial Humonoid, again got himself imported into the helm, this time as a “civilinized and repented” person, but they forgot that the leopard does not change its spots!
What did we get? He went about conscripting his cronies with addle-brains and bahama-height intelligence from the neck of his woods whom he claimed to have trusted to superintend the affairs of the nation called Nigeria!
What was the result? In a jiffy, they went about in an orgy of corruption and corrupt practices, committing rape and rapine, leading to an economic embolism and stasis, today, the country is comatose!
However, it’s ironic that the Jack-booted fellah who went about sniffing lives out of innocent folks for malfeasances, had left the people who committed harakiri and disemboweled our motherland footloose as they go about cavorting the Nigerian land space unmolested!
Apparently, it can safely be deduced that the president in question, in an *Agbata-ekee* fashion, may have  equipped the gang he recruited with the grub stakes with which they went about in their savage mission. The heisters stole so much that the atmosphere cannot contain the effluvium; dins of pain and anguish have suffused the Nigerian clime!
But in fairness, the clueless president is not to be blamed; all the blames should be heaped at the doorsteps of the power grabbers who consorted to wrestle power out and laid it as a diadem to their anointed gung-ho.
Right now, they are clambering with the odium and stench of muckraking the salads of corruption and put rescenses which are littered in high places. The bubbles have busted and like a dog daubed with a putrid ordure on both sides of the earlobes, we are all watching to see how they will grapple with the acrid flatus!
All said, the death of Mr. Bartholomew Owoh, was a huge misstep and all those who had a hand in it would live to explain till their mouths shoot out like that of shrew. It’s not a curse!
Ya dịba !!!
Ernest Ezema, a public affairs analyst, wrote from Lagos.
