Judging ‘Sugar Daddy and Side Chick’

Last week, while most Nigerians were going about their business, trying to survive these incredibly difficult times, they received an open invitation from the police to sit in judgment over a lovers’ quarrel (or so it was alleged) that unfortunately ended with a knifing and a bloody death.

Speculations have bubbled since the body of Michael Usifo Ataga, CEO of Super TV, was discovered in a rented apartment in Lekki, Lagos on June 18, the eve of his 50th Birthday. Apparently, he had been stabbed multiple times and left to bleed to death.

The drama and spectacle that trailed this discovery would put a Mexican telenovela to shame except this one involved real people, real lives and would have lasting impacts in the hearts and minds and lives of the people affected.

Chidinma Ojukwu, 21, has confessed to the murder, confessed to have been having amorous congresses with Mr Ataga for some months. Slowly, she had nursed resentment that she wasn’t getting as much as she wanted from the relationship. So, during one of their trysts, on June 15, under the influence of drugs they both took and habouring some resentment that she wasn’t getting enough money from the man, she had stabbed him several times, taken his phone and his ATM card, withdrew money from his account and gone home to her parents.

So innocent did she appear that even her father, when the police turned up to arrest her, disputed her capacity to commit such a crime. And now it appears, even the victim’s family, in a press statement by the deceased’s brother, doubts that a young woman so puny and meek could have overpowered Mr Ataga and stabbed him.

But all of Nigeria and beyond know this story already. The police made sure everyone did. They had arrested Chidinma, gathered journalists at their office and unleashed her and her incredible story on the world. The details are as seedy as they can get. Sex, drugs, infidelity, murder and theft. All the salacious ingredients for gossip blog stew.

In the eye of the world, Chidinma is guilty of murder and theft and the victim was guilty of sugar daddying and doing drugs with someone younger than his daughter.

That is the problem here. Is it our place to judge? To condemn and gloat over uncorroborated accounts and half-concluded investigations?

In its fervour to demonstrate that it is doing its job, in this instance to show that it has solved the murder of a well-placed member of society, the police had cultivated this habit of ‘parading’ suspects to the media. Suspects are demanded to confess their guilt and their crime, describe how they committed the crimes and vomit sordid particulars that would get Nigerians talking, as happened in this instance.

Unfortunately, when such cases go to trial, they are often undermined by lack of diligent prosecution by the police or shambolic investigation. The consequence is that suspects—and they do remain so until proven guilty—are kept on ice while the trials drag for years until judges tire and dismiss the case.

These public presentations of suspects, in which a suspect’s guilt is all but presumed, are reminiscent of the trial of Rebecca in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, where the judge asked his bailiff to call in the accused, a woman suspected of witchcraft and the man drew in a deep breath and called out in his pitchy voice ladened with disdain, “Sinful Rebecca witch!”

In a way, he had already preempted the outcome of her trial in the same way these spectacles the police stage do.

Today, Mr Ataga is guilty of infidelity and doing drugs with a girl a year younger than his daughter, if rumours are to be believed, only because his alleged murderer said so. There has been no corroboration of her statement—no toxicology report, autopsy or witness account has confirmed this. Yet, he has been condemned, his wife, grieving her husband’s killing and whatever else she might have lost in these last few weeks, has been scrutinised, her worth as a wife called into disrepute.

Since Ataga is dead and cannot state his side of the story, it becomes necessary for empirical evidence gathered at the crime scene and witness account to corroborate or disprove her claims.

Of course, credit has to be given to the police for tracking down the suspect and arresting her. No one says it is a crime to advertise your own success, as the often-thankless job of the police requires. But while global best practice in policing is for the police to announce and confirm that suspects have been arrested in connection to certain crimes, cases or complaints, such media trials of suspects do not qualify as such.

What this episode has managed to achieve is not to successfully establish Chidinma’s guilt, which can only be done in a court of law, but to debase both the Ataga and Ojukwu families.

I suspect it is highly improbable that the Ojukwu’s sent their daughter to university to whore herself and do drugs with a sugar daddy, not to talk of murdering him. So we must reign in our knee-jerk inclination to blame them for not raising their daughter right. If what is good for the goose has always been good for the gander, the Atagas too would have to be blamed for not raising a more faithful husband. But that is not the case and this business of apportioning blames on families we know next to nothing about makes no sense.

What does make sense is that two families have been mortally injured by this happenstance. Looking at this drama, it is clear that there have been two murders already and there might eventually be an execution somewhere down the line. Mr Ataga is dead. May he rest in peace. Although Chidinma started dying the moment she first shoved a knife into her victim, she was eventually murdered by the police when they presented her to the firing squad of public opinion, where Mr Ataga’s reputation was also shot to bits. Even if the police somehow bungle this case and Chidinma escapes justice, socially, she will remain a ghost. If they don’t, the hangman, hood and noose await. No death could be more painful than one to be anticipated for long.

What is even more tragic here is the fact that two families’ grief and loss has been made the subject of our entertainment and runny gossip in such a brazen manner. And that, dear reader, is a shame.