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Mudiaga Affe, Calabar

Bandits on Friday operated in Calabar freely for over three hours, killing an unidentified Inspector of Police that led a team to stop the robbery operations at a popular hotel located behind the headquarters of the Zone 6 Police Command.

 The robbers also shot another policeman at the same hotel before making away with his gun to another part of the Calabar metropolis where they attacked a security operative at a bank, also snatching his weapon.

 Southern City News learnt on Sunday that the armed bandits operated in the Cross River State capital from 9pm to 12 midnight and snatched seven cars before retreating to their hideout.

 An anonymous source said the armed robbers took time to dispossess the hotel customers of their belongings for over one hour before the arrival of the police team whose leader was killed.

 The source said that after leaving the hotel, the bandits went to the Nelson Mandela Street end of the Watt market in Calabar-South stabbed and dispossessed one security operative of his gun.

 He said, “The robbers operated at the hotel for over one hour before the intervention of policemen from the Federal Housing Police Station. The police team were ambushed by the robbers some few metres to the gate of the hotel.

 “They immediately opened fire on them and in the process killed the police inspector that led the team and shot another policeman who is in critical condition.

 “They also collected their guns and headed towards Nelson Mandela in Calabar South where they stabbed one policeman at an old generation bank close to Conoil Filing Station. They also collected the gun of the injured policeman. As they were moving, they were snatching vehicles. I learnt they collected up to seven cars in the course of the operations that lasted from 9pm to 12 midnight.”

 Robbers had also last Tuesday invaded one of the old generation banks along Mayne Avenue in Calabar South and killed one of the mobile policemen on duty and made away with his gun.

 When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. John Eluu, confirmed the robbery operations on Friday.

 He said, “Yes, I am aware of the robbery operation at the hotel. The police are still investigating and will soon arrest the perpetrators.

 “We are calling on members of the public to avail us with useful information at all times to help curb this ugly development,” Eluu said.

Bolaji Akinyemi

My generation, by which I mean the generation which came into political and social consciousness in the 1960s, was lucky in the sense that we had many real heroes, men and women from whom we drew inspiration, who made us feel that the best was within reach and that God’s mission on earth was achievable by doing good. They did not come any greater than John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrick Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Kaduna Nzeogwu, Francis Fajuyi and yes, Mohammed Ali (the Greatest boxer of all times). It was also the age of independence for African states, an age that liberated not just territories but the can-do spirit of the whole world.

It reminded us of the can-do and elevating atmosphere prevalent in the court of King Arthur and his knights of the roundtable. That Court was known as Camelot.

But it was also an unfortunate generation because we watched helplessly as each one of our heroes was assassinated, overthrown, and incarcerated. It was a generation that watched as dreams were aborted. We watched as the dreams of independence turned into the nightmare of massacres, genocide, civil wars and kleptocracy.

Now, the last of the Camelot Titans, Mohammed Ali, is gone, just gone.

I met Ali only once in Lagos during the Shehu Shagari period. The United States under President Jimmy Carter was trying to organise a boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games then due to be held in Moscow. Ali was sent by the Carter Administration to lobby African states to join in the boycott. I was still at the Institute of International Affairs as the Director-General and Professor Isaya Audu was the Foreign Minister.

I turned up in Professor Audu’s office on appointment only to be told to wait a while as an unexpected visitor had shown up. Soon, the door opened and I leapt up as Ali floated out in a boxing posture as he exited the Foreign Minister’s office. Then, we shook hands.

Professor Audu said jokingly that Ali should seek to persuade me about the Moscow boycott. That Ali went on diplomatic missions on behalf of the US showed that even though he was against the Vietnam War and was against racism in the US, he was not against the country. He had a presence and a charm that masked the gritty determination of his beliefs. Ali showed a more profound and nuanced opposition to racism in the US than most of the leaders of the anti-discrimination movements.

The singular act of changing his name from Cassius Clay Jr. to Mohammed Ali sent a more powerful message as a symbolic message than a thousand marches. Ali was probably, actually definitely, not aware of the linkage between Islam and Arab slave trade in Africa. A later awareness of this in his later years might account for his switch from Sunni Islam to Surfism (another variant of Islam).

Ali was a master of the grand gesture, gestures timed for maximum effect. Without a university education, let alone any specialisation in psychology, he used psychology to devastating effect against his opponents before they even climbed into the ring.

Ali, the master performer, elevated boxing from the basement of the poor to the sitting room of royalty and billionaires. Boxing will miss him; sports will miss him; humanity will miss him.

He survived in spite of the fact that he did not play safe. He took on the American system when in 1964, he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Mohammed Ali after joining the Nation of Islam otherwise called the NOI and when he refused to fight in the Vietnam War.

Those who took on the system especially in the 60s and the 70s usually paid with their lives as one hero after another got hunted down by the invisible forces that formed the underbelly of rapacious and vicious system. Mohammed Ali survived.

The death of our heroes, speaking for my generation, did not kill our dreams.Those who kill often do not realise that dreams cannot be killed. They sow seeds that germinate over time and hopefully serve to inspire another generation.

 You said you were the Greatest. So say we all. Your death brings to mind the immortal words of John Donne in his poem, “For whom the bell tolls”, when he wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls, it tolls for thee.”

Good night, Mohammed Ali