Nigeria once
again witnessed a shocking and despicable descent into anarchy and condemnable
barbarism when three people were lynched in the Ikorodu area of Lagos
State
recently on the suspicion of being members of the notorious gang of serial
ritual killers commonly referred to as Badoo. Sadly, it would turn out that the
victims were just innocent Nigerians going about their business, but were set
upon by an angry and mindless mob.
Mob action
has become increasingly commonplace across Nigeria and Lagos in particular.
When a person is not being attacked and killed on the basis of being a
kidnapper or offending members of a particular religious faith, then it has to
be on account of petty theft or being responsible for the disappearance
somebody’s manhood or accidentally knocking somebody down while driving. It is
usually characterised by its spontaneity and the absence of any moderating
influence. But this particular case in Ikorodu, just as in other cases,
proffers a very good reason why it is very dangerous and uncivilised.
The society
has been disgraced by a streak of unspeakable acts of savagery. Four days after
suspected Badoo cultists killed a couple and two of their three children in
Ikorodu, residents of the community apprehended and lynched a suspect accused
of belonging to the group. On July 5, residents of Magbo, Ogijo, in the Sagamu
Local Government Area of Ogun State, also set ablaze a middle-aged man
suspected to be a member of Badoo.
The latest
event was the loathsome act of murder carried out against three young promising
youths. From what was gathered the day after the incident, one of the victims
was a budding comedian, whose car had broken down and was, in company with two
others, on his way to recover the vehicle. As is common with mob action, the
vigilante group that stopped them – and the motley crowd that joined later –
was so eager to take the law into their own hands that they would neither
listen to the explanations nor entreaties of their victims. They reportedly
beat the living daylights out of them before proceeding to set them ablaze,
after dousing them in petrol. This could only have happened in an ungoverned
society, where there is no rule of law.
In civilised
societies, law enforcement officials are usually only a phone call away from
the scene of such violent disorder. Unfortunately, on that day, just like in
many other days, they were not on hand to save the lives of some innocent
citizens when their fellow citizens were visiting the most appalling acts of
savagery upon them.
Lynching,
naturally, is a symptom of an uncivilised society or a practice associated more
with the past, which, with modernisation and passage of time, is soon
jettisoned and consigned to history. There is a clear problem of lack of
confidence and trust in the justice system. For instance, in the United States,
it was rampant in the 18th and 19th centuries with a report chronicling nearly
4,000 lynchings of black people in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.
But happenings in Nigeria show that the
country is still neck deep in this despicable practice; this is a country that
is only laying false claim to civilisation and the rule of law. The citizens
are yet to accept the fact that only the state is legally vested with the power
to take life. That is why some Muslim youths took the law into their own hands
and beheaded an Igbo woman, Bridget Agbaheme, at Kofar Wambai Market in Kano in
June last year for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Mohammed.
But before
then was the horror case of four University of Port Harcourt students who were
incinerated in mob violence for alleged stealing. Again, the mob was too quick
to mete out their own kind of justice as it was later revealed that the four
undergraduates were neither thieves nor criminals. They had gone to the nearby
village of Aluu to collect a debt only for their debtor to raise the alarm and
frame them for robbery.
Not only
were they mercilessly beaten by an irate crowd driven by some demonic spirit,
they were stripped naked and forced to roll in the mud. Not done with the humiliation,
they went ahead to set them ablaze, ignoring the victims’ pleas and attempts to
explain what actually happened. It was a day that Nigerians showed the
bestiality in them as some people still had the equanimity to film the scene
and post it on the internet.
Back in
2007, another victim was Oluwatoyin Olusesin, a teacher at Government Day
Secondary School, Gandu, Gombe State. While supervising an examination, she had
caught a student who was trying to cheat by smuggling some books into the
examination hall. After rightly seizing the books and flinging them outside,
the students gathered and accused her of desecrating the Koran, before lynching
her.
One of the
disadvantages of lynching suspected criminals is that it denies the law
enforcement authorities the opportunity of properly carrying out investigation
into cases to find out others connected with the crime. Especially in the
Ikorodu case, even if the victims of that lynching were Badoo members, as
alleged by their accusers, killing them foreclosed the possibility of
extracting useful information that would have led to the arrest of other
members of the gang that has wiped out many households in the town.
In all of
this, the society is to blame. Nigerians have not, unfortunately arrived at
that social abhorrence of this crime that must precede its practical
extinction. This is a challenge to law enforcement officers to ensure that
people are not allowed to get away with taking the law into their own hands.
This horrendous practice has survived up till now because the perpetrators are
rarely prosecuted and punished. Although attempt was made in the Aluu Four case
to prosecute some people, those standing trial were eventually released.
When laws
are enacted to deal with the issue, as was the case in the US, it will serve as
a deterrent. People will then know that the best thing to do is to hand
suspected criminals over to the lawful authorities. If Nigeria is a civilised
society, then the people should learn to behave in a civilised manner; not like
savages.
Punch editorial
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