Push Against Criminals
Raymon Abbas who goes by the alias Hushpuppi was once a celebrity of sorts but now has attracted enormous public attention outside the world of sophistication, having been arraigned before a California District Court in the United States of America, USA, where he has pleaded guilty to all charges levelled against him.
As a Nigerian, he has done enormous damage to the nation’s reputation, having committed serial fraudulent acts. Indeed, he has represented the nation’s youth besmirched with fraud, making it appear that most persons in his age bracket represent nothing but fraud amid a huge dose of other dishonourable attributes already being labelled on them.
It is imperative to state that the country’s image has ebbed across the world in a manner that any holder of its passport is a suspect for unsubstantiated reasons or at the least expected moments. The scenario is aggravated by the unnumbered crime cases, mostly bordering on advanced fee fraud and other crime related cases, reported across the world.
While the negative trend of insecurity issues and worsening sundry vices are becoming daily occurrences, adding to this battered image at the international level is something that is quite worrisome to all concerned Nigerians.
We must enlist the cooperation of advocacy groups, faith-based and indeed cultural organisations to step up moral resurgence to curtail these abrasive tendencies that are running through the fabric of our national life. It appears increasingly that people have lost touch with morality and the essence of decency, given the level of the debasement in our society. We therefore counsel that an urgent move must be taken to stem the tide of these negative impressions of our country around the world.
The call for a moral rebirth is urgent even as there is complementary need to begin concrete steps towards engaging our youths in such a way that they can exhibit their talents and earn within the limits of their resourcefulness. It is also in line with the calls to begin to re-order our education system where graduates are tailored towards their innate capability rather than just getting a certificate for the sake of it.
On the current investigation of Hushpuppi by the United States of America’s, (USA) FBI, it couldn’t have come at a better time especially that the situation has degenerated embarrassingly. AljazirahNigeria applauds the move and believes it would further send strong warning signals to the many other ‘Hushpuppi(es)’ lurking in the shadows as businessmen while in essence they are fraudsters.
It was disheartening that recently there was the unbridled and or wanton display of wealth during the funeral ceremony of the mother one Obi Cubana in Anambra State, this saw the social media which is the turf of the youth population, buzzing as the show of stupendous wealth by his friends became the talk of town.
AljazirahNigeria urges the Federal Government to step in to curtail such acts especially at a time as we are in when it is increasingly becoming quite a herculean task for many families to put food on their table. In countries like Singapore and some countries for instance, there is a state regulation on how much an individual could hold in a bank account, which is geared toward creating an atmosphere of sanity within the polity where there is direct correspondence between individual wealth with its source.
Indeed, so far, the FBI have exhibited extra-ordinary professional excellence in their job up to the recent linking of other persons in a string of alleged corruptive influences capable of undermining and demeaning our security organisations who should in the first line of checking some of these misdemeanours.
In line with the Federal Government’s avowed commitment to an anti-corruption drive, it must not lower its guards when it is obvious that fraudulent acts have been perpetuated at whatever level.
We counsel that there should be no thin-gods or sacred cows who should be protected or excluded from the long arms of the law when it becomes necessary.
We stress unequivocally that our nation must begin to yearn for a more responsive approach to tracking not just financial crimes but even other elements of criminality have all made us a laughing stock in the comity of nations. It would not be complimentary to say that our situation is isolated but there is the need to be up in our game against these situations getting worse by the day.