Not Too Young To Slap!

Our forefathers say power if an intoxicant which only those with the strongest of characters should be entrusted with. As if echoing them, Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Senator Ishaku Elisha Abbo was entrusted with power as a senator representing Adamawa North in the 9th Senate (polling 79,337 votes against the incumbent senator, Binta Masi Garba who scored 63,219 ) but he failed the character test woefully when he savagely assaulted a nursing mother in a sex toy shop. The blow by blow recording of the encounter which has now been viewed by millions of people all over the world, was captured by the shop’s CCTV camera.
The greater tragedy in the 41-year-old senator’s self-destruct is that he has done a great damage to his generation.  Imagine how he was touted — fraudulently, it now appears — as a beacon of hope by his publicists: “Senator Ishaku Abbo (SIA), is a young revolutionary and advocate of the masses from Gova in Muchalla village of Mubi North LGA, Adamawa State…  He lived in Lagos, Sydney Australia, London UK, Canada and now Abuja Nigeria. Before his election he was the Managing Director and CEO of Saice & Wright Group, Abuja, a multinational political consultancy firm, he is a professional political consultant and analyst of great experience, an erudite business man.”
Now the bubble has burst. Abbo has been exposed as just another thug in high office. When the video went viral, he promptly issued a public apology: “It is with a deep sense of remorse and responsibility that I,  Senator Ishaku Abbo, profoundly apologise to all Nigerians, the Senate, the Peoples Democratic Party, my family as well as our mothers—the Nigerian women. I personally apologise to Barbara (the lady he reportedly assaulted) and her family for my action, which has brought immense discomfort to our body polity. I have never been known or associated with such actions in the past. REGARDLESS OF WHAT TRANSPIRED PRIOR TO MY EXPRESSION OF ANGER, I am sincerely sorry and plead that all men and women of good conscience should have the heart to forgive me….”
I agree with many online commentators who have said that Abbo’s apology was an afterthought. And it is half-hearted. Granted that it is as good a script as money can buy, the apology rubs salt into the wound by saying, “REGARDLESS OF WHAT TRANSPIRED PRIOR TO MY EXPRESSION OF ANGER…” We know what transpired — The senator lost his mind! And his police orderly did nothing to caution his boss as he was blatantly committing a crime.
There is no doubt that he would never have apologised had the video not gone viral, leading to public outrage and indictment from all quarters across political party lines. (The FCT Police Command Invited him; the Senate set up a 7-member ad hoc committee to probe the incident; Reps condemned the assault; his party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, declared that the law should take its course; his party, PDP, summoned him ; Hon. Dabiri-Erewa who chairs the Diaspora Commission tweeted that Abbo ought to be in jail; various human rights groups staged demonstrations to the National Assembly and the Police headquarters calling for the head of the Slapping Senator….)
The assault happened on May 11 — nearly three months after Mr Abbo became a senator-elect and one month before he was sworn in on June 11. (Senator Abbo initially claimed the incident occurred in March and not May as reported in the media and also denied assaulting the woman.) In all those months, it never occurred to him that he had done something wrong and that he needed to apologise. He didn’t know that he would eventually run foul of the karmic 11th Commandment: Thou shall not be found out.
In his book, ARROW OF GOD, Chinua Achebe warned that, “A man who brings home ant-infested firewood should not complain if he is visited by lizards”. The exposure of Abbo’s violent behaviour made many social media enthusiasts dredge up Wikipedia’s publication in which one Cliff Elisha Ishaku, on February 7 2004, took the authorities of the Nigerian Naval Training College, Onne, Port Harcourt, to court for allegedly denying him admission into the college on account of his testing positive to the HIV virus, despite passing the recruitment test. The legal action was filed on his behalf by Jude Okeke, at the Abuja Federal High Court.
Another revelation purporting to come from the APC in Ado-Ekiti alleged that Elisha Abbo was a SPECIAL ADVISER under Governor  Peter Fayose, and was given a special apartment in the Ekiti State Government House where he carried out underhand cyber-related activities for the governor.
Abbo’s case ought to teach our politicians, old and young, one major lesson: the journey from relative anonymity to global notoriety and infamy takes just one misstep.
Unfortunately, Abbo is not alone in misuse of high position to brutalise the less privileged. It is common for big men to oppress lesser mortals. The age of the offender is not the issue. But it is a great disservice to those who have advocated a generational change in leadership. Many of us subscribed to the “Not Too Young to Run” slogan during the last elections. Are these the type of leaders who will inherit the mantle of leadership from the Buharis and Atikus and Obasanjos and Tinubus of this world?
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”, says the bard. I am not neutral. Let Abbo face the law.