This kind of incidence drags down the level of national discourse. But then in truth, we may not deceive ourselves that we have attained the levels that other nations have while living with millions of minds that remain bestial and in a state of suspended animation when it comes to religion and tribalism/ethnicity. The Nigerian state MUST show who is the boss, otherwise, we submit our certificate of statehood back to the United Nations and carry on as beasts of the wild.
Not only have we screwed up our economy and society through myopia, sheer incompetence and mismanagement, but we have also failed to communicate with and lift up millions of minds to see things properly and understand the true meaning of civilisation. Civilisation, mind you, is the ability to live in large communities and tolerate diversity and diverse opinions. We admit that we do not want society to go on a tailspin whereby everything and anything is permitted. Yes. But one of the ‘anythings’ that must not be permitted too, is for anyone or a group of people to get up and UNDER ANY DISGUISE, kill a fellow human being… not for religious purposes, economic reasons, or that they have committed a crime.
Thomas Hobbes described that primitive state of being where life was nasty, brutish and short. In that state, nobody had a specific right to anything. A thief was not a thief. A killer was not a killer. A robber was not a robber. He was just acting on survival instincts and so could attack anyone to collect whatever they had just to satisfy himself. Everybody sought to defend himself and to kill and maim while doing it where necessary or whenever it catches their fancy – such as to prove who was stronger. It was the Dark Ages, though every morning and afternoon, the world was as bright as it is today. The sun shone to illuminate life. But humans refused to see it. Anyone still deliberately living in those Dark Ages should be outed for such a reason.
For at some point, human beings came together and decided to vest their rights to self-defence in the state. Therefore, if someone wrongs you, rather than stab or kill them, you report to the state to do justice on your behalf. The world decided to move on from the nasty, brutish, sad and short ways of existence. Alas, in Nigeria, with tens of millions of people in a dark state of mind, enveloped by fanatic adherence to a religion that creates no space for deep interrogation of their actions, we are in deep trouble.
On citizen Deborah, the Nigerian state must show who’s the boss. Thankfully, Buhari is not running for the presidency in 2023. I have noticed how almost every aspirant has not spoken on the matter of the dastardly lynching of Deborah, the Sokoto College of Education student. But I think there must be intelligent ways of engaging this particular issue. For instance, we have heard how street lynching by a mob is unIslamic. We have heard verses quoted to explain what is required of the Muslim Ummah if someone is said to have blasphemed. There is a judicial precedence up to the Supreme Court, where people have also paid the supreme sacrifice in the proper hands of the laws of the land, for taking laws into their hands and killing someone for blasphemy. The mob does not replace the khadis and grand khadis of our Shari’a courts. All of us have now become scholars and that is good. But can we rein in the recalcitrant fellows? The ones who went on rampage damaging properties and threatening people, giving a very bad name and face to the religion of Islam? Can we get so-called enlightened people like Captain Jamil Abubakar, former pilot and son of a former Inspector General of Police, who said he could not summarily support street urchins to grab anyone, cudgel them to death and set them on fire?
And there are other killers in our failed nation. Before this nasty act by these crazies, the latest outrage in town was about the killing of two lovebird soldiers. The perpetrators, somewhere in the east of Nigeria, also got that on tape. They recorded for the world to see as they commented about the wages of sin against their cause. They were members of a separatist group. After raping the lady with many bruises on her body, they proceeded to slice her head off while she still breathed and then placed the head on her body. What a fate to befall someone in this world. It is a moot point to argue whether Buhari has lost control of this country anyway.
In the South West of the country, we also have the phenomenon of lynching petty thieves. A couple of months ago, I recall seeing two such charred bodies in Mile 2 on approach from the Oshodi Expressway. And just a few days ago, we saw another person – this time a sound engineer – lynched and burnt up in highbrow Lekki in Lagos. In the South West too, we have crazy people who daily kidnap and kill people for ritual purposes. This happens everywhere in the country but is rife in this region.
The government MUST draw a line over any of these. Granted, that the religious one gets the most attention. Some of those who commended or ignored the killing of the soldiers in the east, and the many policemen and other paramilitary workers that have been killed by the dozens, are today amplifying and playing ‘civilized’ over the Sokoto incident
Something tells me that in this social media age, we can achieve something with the Deborah event. Luckily, these terrible events are few and far between. With the dissemination of information these days, we can banish such bestiality. Granted that there are problems in every country (knife crimes among black teenagers in the UK, gun crimes in the USA – also often among black people), we are in a peculiar situation here. Our reputation is already shot to pieces. However, we cannot solve the problem by burning down our country.
Every country has its own issues. If we ran to the USA for instance, to complain about this issue, they will be mocking us if they give us audience. For on the same day that these street urchins here were killing Deborah in cold blood, a certain Payton Gendron, just 18, in even colder blood, murdered 10 people in Buffalo, New York. He targeted blacks. Countless of such incidences happen there. The USA should probably be asking us how our society is relatively more peaceful than theirs.
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