The biggest disaster in Nigeria is human engineered and neglect and we can't address our problems because we are too busy defending the perpetrators who comes from our neck of the woods in the name of ethnicism

"I pledge to Nigeria my country
To be faithful, loyal and honest
To serve Nigeria with all my strength
To defend her unity and uphold her honor and glory
So help me God."

Can any Naija politicians say this without equivocation?

TEDx Spokane Talk

TEDx Spokane Talk

Slide #1: As a trial attorney, I love going to bat for my clients and my training as public defender commends me to represent my clients and not causes.

Slide #2: The story I am about to tell you however has little to do with trial advocacy. in fact I found my path to career success outside of the courtroom. Few years ago, I discovered that victory in court alone will not keep my clients out of jail. I realized that in modern America it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent. This depressing state is where I found myself 4 years ago. No thanks to the revolving doors of our criminal justice system.

Slide #3: Today, however I wake up every day excited to go to work, but it wasn’t always that way and I think sharing a little bit about my journey may probably inspire one or two other people.

Slide #4: Everyone here knows that winters in Spokane can be very brutal, especially around Christmas. And for someone like me that grew up in tropical Africa, it is particularly tough. It was one of those under 10 degrees days when Mike grabbed my hand, jumping up and down: “Francis you saved my life! You got me out of jail; I got a job as a janitor, got clean for a few weeks. I know I promised you I won’t use drugs anymore but I did and I lost my job again. Now I am back here at the homeless shelter. Please don’t give up on me!”

Slide #5: When I looked around the faces of others huddled in blankets all around the room, I see many of my clients, some of whom I recently got out of jail after a hard won motion and trial advocacy. They are homeless, famished, with no hope and nowhere to go.

Slide #6: When Mike finally let go of me, my eyes caught something on the wall of the transitioning shelter. It was the list of all the homeless people affiliated with the shelter that died that year. When I drew closer, I found more than half of the 12 people on that list are my clients. When inquired of the cause of death for one of those posted on the notice board, an individual I believed I got out of jail on pretrial motion victory, I was informed he died of complications from frost bite and alcohol induced dementia.

Slide # 7: Guess what crimes my clients often go to jail for? Simple misdemeanor offenses, something we call quality of life crimes. In fact, one of the cases I represented Mike in was for taking a bite of an apple at the 7/11 store. The value of the item: 78 cents!

Slide #8: Now, get this, it cost a minimum of $120 per day to house people in jail.  A colleague of mine once said that, it would have been cheaper if we put jail inmates up in the most expensive hotel downtown.

Slide #9: The experience I had at that transitional shelter with Mike got seared into my memory, as an immigrant from Africa, I believed no one should die they way my client died, helpless without dignity, in the greatest nation on earth

Slide #10: As Madiba Nelson Mandela rightly stated "overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity, it is an act of justice".

Slide #11: It was such a joy then, when I got back to my office and discovered that a collaborative team prosecutors, public defenders, the court and police officers were putting together the first Spokane Community Court .  I was happy to be part of the team. The team made a deliberate choice to locate the court away from the courthouse to the downtown library.

Slide #12: With the help of our current police chief, we pulled the data and found facts that confirm my suspicion that my clients were serving life sentences even though they didn’t know it.

Slide #13: The number of people of color and the poor in our county jail pre and post trial compare to their population figures was also saddening.

Slide #14: We also found that majority of my client suffers from mental health. In fact,  Spokane county jail was then the only county jail in the state to be licensed as a mental health provider with close to 46 suicide watch cells!

Slide #15: We immediately began to work with Spokane County Medical Foundation and Spokane City Human Services and Housing Authority making Spokane Community Court, one of the few community courts in the nation to successfully connect the dots between incarceration, poverty and health care.

Slide #16: The Community of care providers strategically co-located with the court has since assisted a hundred and forty three participants in obtaining housing, health care, and mental health counseling. This continuum of care has changed many lives by connecting my clients with nurses, doctors, and a place to live while they resolve their criminal charges. In fact last Sunday, while shopping at our local Costco, an elderly African America gentleman gave me a bear hug, and said thank you, you helped me when my son suffers from addiction years ago. He's doing well now. Thank you.

Slide #17: But it wasn’t me but the community made it happened. There is a judge willing to get the community involved in dispensing Justice, there are prosecutors willing to stop counting their successes on how many convictions obtained annually. The community of nurses, doctors, firemen, police officers, mental health counselors, and social workers willing to leave the confines of their offices, hospitals, churches, mosques and synagogues and meet people where they are at: under the bridges and alleyways of our inner cities, landlords willing to rent to people with criminal history, employers willing to give people with criminal record a chance to prove their skills and dexterity by banning the box on criminal record in employment application.

Slide #18: Now, remember Mike, the gentleman that asked me not to give up on him on that Christmas trip to the homeless shelter, he died a little while ago. But before his death, he was housed again after living on the street for a long time, he lived a good life and for more than 6 months while on weekly report to the court lived well. His family stated that the time he spent after our intervention was the best part of his life. His daughter was happy she finally gets to hug her Dad before he passed away. Herein lies my joy, but we are not there yet. The answer to low level quality of life crimes is going to take more than a sob story from me.

Slide #19: We need a community oriented criminal justice that cares for the poor, the homeless, minorities and the marginalized.  A court that is not run on the back of the fines and fees paid by the poor. Today, we found more people come to Community court to access services than those that come with a ticket and citations

Slide #20: You too can become part of this great change, find the data on how many homeless people live in your city. What is their race and ethnicity? How many routinely get thrown in jail for quality of life crimes? What is your city or town doing about it? What are you doing about it?

How did we become the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world? if your city or county has a Community Court near you, visit them to volunteer or just go in to see things for yourself and while there, thank the volunteers who are at the fore front of this struggle. If there are none in your neighborhood ask why not?

Slide #21: To stand a chance of overcoming the challenges we faced in America today, Access to care has to meet access to justice. It's time we look into collaboration.

Slide #23: Yes, the task ahead is daunting and unprecedented, but we limit ourselves when we rely on what has been done before.  But as Dr. King once said, the long arc of moral universe bends towards true justice.

Slide #24: And when that happens, we will reap the benefits, save tax payers money and improve quality of life of our fellow citizens. Thank you and please Join in!

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense."
- Barak Obama

Civility?

“When you’re in an argument with a thug, there are things much more important than civility.”- Benjamin DeMott

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

― William O. Douglas, The Douglas Letters: Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas

"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones."

- Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (1994)

Ethnic Neurons

“A funny thing happens,” Haidt said, “when you take young human beings, whose minds evolved for tribal warfare and us/them thinking, and you fill those minds full of binary dimensions. You tell them that one side in each binary is good and the other is bad. You turn on their ancient tribal circuits, preparing them for battle. Many students find it thrilling; it floods them with a sense of meaning and purpose.”

The problem is that tribal common-enemy thinking tears a diverse nation apart.” – David Brooks NY Times

Flatter to Hire: When People’s Governor Steps on Academic Independence

“The problem with corrupt, corporate, incompetent government is corruption, corporatism and incompetence, not government.”     ~Jerome a Paris, 2004

I can’t seem to get away from this insouciant concern for academic independence and Governor’s Fayose’s penchant for mob rule camouflaged as masses rule. According to news report, the Governor was about to assess the third phase of Ado/Ikere road dualization  when a member of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) accosted him and request to snap a picture with him. Let’s set aside the image of the corpse member on his knees with two hands raised up for one minute and consider the Governor’s reaction. It is apparent this is a governor rules by fiat and acts based on flattery with an insouciant disregard for academic independence. Can you imagine this happening in any other place other than Nigeria?

Let’s go over the encounter with the Governor’s again, from the Vanguard newspapers account, the youth corper after approaching the governor states: “Good afternoon Mr. Governor, I am a native of Edo, I relocated from Adamawa to Ekiti State because of my love for you, I follow everything you do religiously online, I love you so much and I pray God take you higher and higher. I graduated from UNIBEN with a first class in Political Science and Public Administration, one thing I pray thee Sir, please allow me snap with you Sir”, the Corps member said. Governor Fayose who obliged the request, said to him “go to the provost tomorrow, tell her I asked her to give you automatic employment”.

Note in particular the flattery embedded in the youth corper’s words. The kid must have studied the weakness of our “Donald Trump” like governor, they both love flatteries. I lost count of how many “I love you” in the statement and the icing is “snap with you”. What a show! A first class act of empty blandishment, evident from the fact that the youth corper cannot point to any positive policy impact of the governor other than following the governor “religiously online”. I am sure that includes many insults flung at the president, his wife as well as Governor Fayose’s predecessor, the primal object of his invectives online. Is this youth corper behavior a reflection of the malaise in our education system? Whatever happens to the days when youth corper like late Bamidele Aturu refuses to shake the hands of military governor Lawan Gwadabe of Niger state because he believes military subjugates the will of the people?

Finally let’s examine the governor’s statement: “go to the provost tomorrow, tell her I asked her to give you automatic employment.” This is where we find ourselves in Nigeria. Our governors, like Louis XIV are now “lest cei moi” they are the state. They are laws onto themselves. If we set aside the affront of a state governor, who have history of alleged forgery of education qualifications, commanding the head of an education institution in his state to hire someone by fiat, whatever happens to academic independence?

In any way, the provost reaction was very diplomatic to say the least, she merely asked the youth corper to go bring his curriculum vitae.  If the governor has been familiar with the hiring process in academic institutions he would have realized that often when there is an opening there are lots of qualified applicants waiting in line for interview and the rigorous process is put in place to ensure that applicants are not hired just because they are good at “honeyed words.”