Related article: [U]How your Fathers Looted and Ruined Nigeria, Published July 7 2007 on NVS.[/U]

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/guest-articles/how-your-fathers-looted-and-ruined-ni.html

Many Fathers (and now Mothers) are thieves and looters. Is there any doubts about this fact?

I guess it's difficult ratting out your own parents especially if you benefited from their crimes. This judge should not be on the bench!

http://www.judicialaccountability.org/articles/judgesdadmobster.htm
Judge 'Booty'

By Alex Ginsberg
New York Post
March 19, 2007

The judge wasn't just married by the mob. They put a roof over her head, too.

Jailed Luchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso claims he paid $80,000 during the 1980s for an apartment for future-acting Supreme Court Justice Deborah Kaplan, the daughter of his pal, Burton Kaplan.

In documents he wrote in federal prison in Florence, Colo., Casso is also said to have confirmed reports that he lent Burton Kaplan - the star witness in the Mob Cops trial - $150,000 for the future judge's 1985 wedding.

And, in a shocking twist, Casso claims that he has twice recently written to the Manhattan judge to enlist her help in preventing her dad from evicting Casso "Gaspipe's" son from his childhood home.

That eviction case, a bizarre postscript to the Mob Cops trial, began last October when Burton Kaplan, a longtime drug trafficker and Casso buddy, started proceedings to boot Casso's son from his Mill Basin, Brooklyn, home.

Casso Sr. allegedly had deeded the property to Burton in 1985 as part of a money-laundering scheme, with the understanding that he would one day return it.

But things went bad when Casso was arrested in 1993 and assumed that Burton had dropped a dime on him, sources said.

Casso put a hit on his former friend, prompting Burton to try to evict the son as payback, Casso Jr.'s lawyer, Bruce Baron, claims in papers fighting the eviction.

Bruce Baron declined to comment specifically on the document involving the judge, but said he believed it could bolster his bid to expose Burton Kaplan's ownership of the Mill Basin house as a fraud.

Deborah Kaplan, who enjoys a good reputation on the bench, has been dogged by constant revelations about her father's past since he emerged as the star witness against Mob Cops Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito.

Through a spokesman, she said Casso's allegations about her home and wedding were news to her.

Burton Kaplan's lawyer declined any comment.

The Casso document is not specific as to the location of the apartment he claims to have purchased, nor the time period.

But, according to a source, Casso did place the $150,000 wedding loan at around the time he gave Burton Kaplan the deed to the house, noting in the document that his then-friend was broke

THE DAUGHTER OF THIEVING DAD: A PEAK INTO THE MIND.

\"What if you tell me people are saying my Father is a Thief? The thing is, I won't know. No, not in that sense that I will be oblivious of it, I just wouldn't know! My brains would have been tuned-off that reality for another fake reality where my father would be a loving, caring and hard-working Dad who happens to have a lot of \"enemies\" who are saying nasty things about him being a Thief and all that negativity - you know.\"

\"It doesn't matter that, a few years ago, my father was a broke-ass man who could hardly pay schoolfees for my siblings and I, only to luck upon a political appointment and our fortunes changed. All of a sudden, he removed us from the public school where we used to have to go to 'Angola' or 'Burkina-Fasso' whenever I want to shiet and sent us to UK's best schools.\"

\"That is how caring my Daddy is. I don't know about your Daddy, Sabella, but my Daddy is special - he wants the best for his children and he works hard for it. Now, my siblings and I don't have to 'Bend-Down' to wear used designers anymore, we spend our holidays in London in Hard Currency. And everybody is 'jealousing' us - especially that my friend who thinks because his Daddy is some John Hopkins-trained doctor, he's better than my Laspotech-trained Dad.\"

\"Infact, that is the most-exciting part of all these for me. For the longest time, I have always thought his Dad was the best. Now I see that they are not all that. For example, I can't remember their Daddy ever travelling abroad - unlike us now, we go almost every other month. Mummy doesn't work her old job anymore; she is now self-employed. What job did she do, you asked? I don't know! Stop asking those kind of questions. My mom has always been classy - no doubt.\"

\"She has always been yellow. Yes, you are right - \"Fair\" is the word. It is those 'razz' neighbors of mine who make me talk like that sometimes. Yes, she has always been fair. I don't know what nonesense people are saying that my Mommy is bleaching. As for her weight, how many mothers stay out there stay the same way they were after bearing shildren? They even said my Daddy has no neck now - it's all jealousy that is making them insult my Daddy and Mommy\"

\"Just because my Daddy raised our fence and refurbished our house, they are saying he is a Thief. Who wants those kind of people looking into our compund anyways. We were never poor - No!!! My Daddy just kept a low-profile and saved his money till he was comfortable enough to start living well. And he had always planned to build a mansion in our home-town anyways. Hence the one we built there last year. It's so beautiful!. And all these stupid people are saying my Daddy stole money. It is all jealousy.\"

\"My parents are both very lovely people no matter what people say about them. My Daddy always said he worked hard for everything. And he is friends with everybody. So what if Adedibu is his friend? My Daddy doesn't have a bad blood in him for anyone. Some are saying he was a Cultist as Laspotech and that he dropped out..and that my Mom didn't do more than standard-six. So, my Mommy sha went to London Hairdressing College. \"

\"My Daddy told us never to steal. I have never seen him take anybody's money. Even, in Shursh, they made him Baba Ijo of CAC Oke-Igbala at Bodija. We pray everynight after Daddy rings the bell for us to come downstairs. He is a very lovely man. He is training us well. He tells us not to take anybody's money but to work hard like him. I am his Daughter, so I know this first-hand. That our fortunes changed over the years is the Doing of the Lord. \"

\"When next I am going to London? I will let you know. You want to marry me? Heeehee, yu are not serious....\"[/COLOR]

I thank this writer for broaching this subject. It is a subject that I wanted to write about, albeit with a slightly more complex approach.

This issue is quite serious, and has serious implications for the discourse of, and fight against, corruption in Nigeria. It speaks to the multiple levels of culpability in what one writer provocatively calls a "culture of corruption" in Nigeria.

In an article I published here on corruption, I touched upon this a little by exploring the the familial, social, communal, and cultural factors that enable and sustain corruption. Indeed, corruption is a group thing, with many witting and unwitting participants.

Of all this, the most uncomfortable for Nigerians is the question of familial entanglement--both direct and indirect--in the culture of corruption.

Sometimes the complicity is very remote or so indirect as to be neglected by people related to or acquainted with such complicit folks.

Other times, people just look the other way, expressing outrage when corruption scandals affect others and/or their relations but keeping quiet or, worse, defending their corrupt relations, when it affects their own.

Yet at other times, the complicity is benignly distributed and unwittingly appropriated by people who didn't stop to contemplate the moral implications of what they were doing or being sucked into. Example of this are children of corrupt politicians and bureucrats. Whether such a child participates wittingly or unwittingly in the proceeds of their parent's corruption, they are complicit and that may rob them of the moral courage to speak out against corruption--or, worse, compel them to defend or rationalize corruption.

For yet another group of people, their very existence depends on the patronage of corrupt folks. In this category you have unprincipled lawyers, and traditional rulers who bestow chieftaincy titles on "sons of the soil" who have enriched themselves while serving in government.

Without an understanding of these multiple and multi-layered complicities and culpabilities, one can never understand why some Nigerians vocally defend, minimize, rationalize, enable, justify, and selectively condemn corruption.

But this by no means means that every Nigerian or every human being is complicit in corruption, an argument that my friends Obugi and NAR have made on this board in the past and against which I protested loudly.

Even for folks whose parents have corruptively enriched themselves, if they have not directly benefitted from the proceeds (such as being educated abroad with the proceeds), they shouldn't have to bear the moral burden of their parents' corruption.

And even those who were educated with corrupt money or who got their enterpreneural start with corrupt money from parents, restitution is always possible if they really want to wipe away their culpability and to regain their moral credibility on matters of corruption.

Ebe,

Welcome back.



Mmmmh. This is exactly the position I have taken in the past, and I stand by it.



Good luck finding a the innocent Nigerians. Actually, I'm one of them.

You have your own moral standards.

I have mine.

Everyone else has theirs.

What is it that makes one standard superior to the other?

I contend that the oil resources of the Niger Delta have been unjustly seized by the Fed Govt of Nigeria, extracted at the cost of great environmental damage, and sustained by murder.

Knowingly or unknowingly, some "ordinary" people have benefited from university education financed with that stolen money. Added to that, some have pursued their careers in ways that have not benefitted the very people whose privations enabled their good fortune - and I don't mean just those who have gone abroad.

This is just one instance. I could go on and on. Subsidies, bribes, aquiescing to illegal govts, etchetram etcheteram. This is your remote association, I guess.

In my own estimation, NO ONE IS INNOCENT

Except me and my father, my mother, my siblings, all my cousins and uncles, my village people....wait O, there is that one family....whatever.....

We can agree to disagree. As Fela sang, na small **** dey spoil nyash.

Obugi.

Errr...how about the ease with which some of us (Obugi, specifically) acquiesce, excuse or justify acts of direct theft or exploitation through the process of advanced-fee fraud a.k.a. 419?

That I absolutely reject such sharp-practices should naturally and, with immediate effect and alacrity, make my standards on morality supremely superior to someone like Obugi's, I'd say.

Auspicious.

Auspy, you overlooked something:

Yorubas say;

Eni ba paro, a jale, a (1) se pansaga/agbere (2) lo ewon and (3) pa enia. Whoever lies will steal and
(1) commit fornication/adultery (2) spend time in jail and (3) murder/kill.

Proverbs 29:24 states; Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own soul: he heareth cursing, and bewrayeth it not.

If the source of a parent's wealth is from injustice, violation and exploitation, how shall the children who were raised on such "legacy" be spotless? The likelihood that they (children) will follow the steps of their parents is very high.

We all know that the final result of wickedness is God's jugement. A word is enough for the wise.

Oluwato

When Ikemefuna in the famed book, "Things fall apart" ran towards his adopted father, Okonkwo, seeking refuge, he made the wrongest choice of his life! He, like an average African child erroneously believed his 'father" is simply some god on foot who can do no wrong.

He learnt his lesson on the highway to heaven!

Same goes for our daddies here, particularly our political fathers who have simply shown us, they are only interested in themselves, and themselves alone, all the others could well be damned. Oh, and please add their children too!

We as children have learnt a lot, the act of running away from the hand of the law than the beauty of running an enduring government-Our teacher, Prof. Alams!

We also learnt the that it could be fatal to go steal in the market place some 30 naira bread as one could be lynched by some angry mob.Rather, one could just scheme his way to some political office, plunder the treasury and forget being caught. Oh, if one is caught, then the biggest jail term one would get is a suspended sentence of one week.-Our teacher, Inspector Tafa said so!

We learnt too that the fact that one being a professor of medicine doesn't guarantee some accurate operation on the dead! Okay, make that post mortem. For ages, the Mobitel boss will always turn in his grave. A proffessor could not ascertain what killed him, whether ti's some bullet or he simply "fell" from some high place.

We now know that insults, abuses and "yabis" doesn't have its only place amongst the immature. Taking a cue from both baba and bros ATK, it's just great to call our "enemies in whatever shade" any unprintable name right on primetime tv.

Ah, i almost forgot, we can settle our difference with fisticuffs wherever we are. We 've been taught that whenever we wake up, is our morning, hence if the argument arises in the hallowed chamber of the House, we need not call Don King to help organise or clear the boxing ring. Do it where you are is the mantra! The more cameras available in that place, the better!

When we thought within us, isn't this some bad lessons and decided to run to our mothers, we got a shocker. we were taught how to beautify a home with the entire state treasury. We wanted to complain, but they gave us a knock on our "kongba kongba" head, and asked us, if we don't know that women are natural home makers.

Fine, some dads are alright though, but their numbers are way too few and far between, and we are not too sure about them too! As a matter of fact, most of our daddies that put it so succinctly;that proffer so glorious solutions on the pages of newspapers; that shout it so loud and clear using the radio and television have a way of becoming "born again" critics or outright turncoat the moment crumbs is thrown thier way!

Some of them may not simply take up some appointment with the Government. No! that may be too brash, but most of them pander towards the corporate creations of the bad fathers! They do not hesitate to accept invitation to to attend organised corporate cocktails, it 's all well and good if some corporate stooge is willing to pick up the flight ticket of the vociferous opinion leader to wherever. They are willing beneficiaries of Corporate Social Responsibility. It doesn't matter if the CSR effort is oiled, perfected and delivered by the devil himself!

Well, we know we have fathers. We know they sired us too. But we wonder if they actually meant well for us, we really can't confirm if they are thiefs, but .....really we are confused, really...

I think it was Francis Bacon who claimed that �The end of morality is to procure the affections to obey reason, and not to invade it�. Others (others are the existentialists) would claim that people actually make decisions based on what has meaning to them rather than what is rational.

As long as you are dependent on your parents' free board, meals and clothing, your instincts is self-preservation, that is to say you don't want it taken away as a result of you criticizing or questioning the sources of their wealth. And the existentialist are right about this.

In past life, and during my dark days, what was rational to me was getting my parents to send me money to continue my education in Europe by whatever means possible (bribe it, smuggle it). The sources for the money is of least concern to me, but obviously, my parents' good morality was more important to them than my hardship�In that time, I issued enough curses to last them in their life time.

Anyway, what if my parent was a thief? This is a strong dilemma in a desperate case! To act with infamy, or quit the family! How different the emotions between beginning and end! In the beginning, the child feels appalled, outraged, betrayed etc; but at the end, the child finds excuses (no matter how thin) for the crime committed by the parent.

BTW, Have you heard of the �precedence argument?�, Perhaps the child might call on it in defence of the thieving papa or mama. The �precedence argument� goes something like this: If the thieving �Professional hair dresser� Etteh's children feel no shame for their thieving mama, why should I feel ashamed of my thieving papa or mama?

Now here is a a little joke i heard on the tele: �what is good for the goose is good for uganda� Ha! (pause) ha! (pause) ha!

Readers should not think I support the �precedence argument?� because I don't!. My most likely reaction would be to quit the family and get on with my own life as far away as possible.

Abidde this is brilliant and brings home the issues of personal morality and moral courage.The answer is to do your best in how you conduct yourself and your affairs.
When your corrupt relative throws that big party.....you can be too busy to attend.When IBB is invited to give a keynote address copy Soyinka and boycott the event.
If your sister is going to Italy to prostitute herself tell her how much you care for her and try to discourage her from such enterprise.
What if your father is Rev King?

If my father suddenly becomes rich after being appointed into a political office, I will rejoice with him. Who am I to query where my father got his wealth from? But if he is caught, tried and convicted of stealing, even though all the stolen money was not recovered from him, that is, he still has enough to make life comfortable for us his children, I will definitely be ashamed to identify publicly with such a thieving father. I have not come across anybody who claims he is the son of Anini or Oyenusi.

If my mother went abroad, and started sending in hard currency to us at home, with the information that she had a respectable job that pays so well in obodo oyibo, I will definitely rejoice at that. But if it came to my knowledge that she had been into prostitution, that will be the end of our cosy relationship as mother and child, unless she dropped the bad habit.

I will not disown either of my parents since it will be practically impossible to do that, but I will be ashamed to proclaim a convicted thief, or a confirmed prostitute as my parent.

If my father has stolen, I will...

** Attend the very best school in the world and walk shoulder high (Educational Investment)
** Organize charity fund just like the 'better life For Rural Women' and government officials will contribute more (...talk about the rich getting richer)
** Own properties in choice countries/ locations and drive 'tear rubber' vehicles (property Investment)
** Be the toast of the town where musician will sing praise me (Social well being)
** Owning a jet or airplane wouldn't be an issue (Ease of transportation)
** Streets/avenues will be named after me (grass root investment)
** Arrange prayers for my father in churches and mosques to ward off evil spirit and untimely death (Spiritual upliftment)
** Advice my father to marry more wives and take more chieftaincy tittles across the board (evenly distribution of wealth)
** Donate 'chairs' to tertiary institutions for under privilege children
** Have shares in blue chips companies
** Wouldn't have to struggle in life

But my father didn't have the opportunity to steal otherwise I wouldn't be in diaspora searching for the proverbial green pastures.

Very, very well said, Sabidde.

We all know corrupt officials have families but interestingly CORRUPTION IS AN ORPHAN!

If charity was to begin at home indeed.

Stay blessed.

To me i think it's time the OYENUSI'S,IYAMU'S and ANINI'S families come out and take there place in NIGERIA SOCIETY as CELEBRITIES.

@
ATTN:OVATION MAGAZINE
Why have you not covered some of these celebrities mentioned above.
Our jounalists,religious leaders and traditional leaders have help celebrate these people.

To the N.P.F and PRISION SERVICES please release all the celebrities(ROBBERS) in your custodies.The A.G.F will confirm this soon.

In the NIGERIAN contest if my father was a thief i won't be here hustling and sending money home,instead i will get a standing order of regular payment from my DAD'S bank account.

If you want to buy a house, you will have to get the business loans. Moreover, my sister all the time uses a consolidation loan, which seems to be really rapid.