Sir: Another day in Nigeria, another dramatic lynching, and the list of those who have lost their lives to the mob grows even longer.
As life has become gravely insecure, it has become easier than ever to die, specifically, to be killed. All it ever takes these days in Nigeria is a stray bullet, a false alarm, or an attack from any of Nigeria’s killer squads, and a country is left to again count its dead.
Too many people have been killed, unaccountably, by the mob, and each time it happens, the rituals from government officials and security agencies are rinsed and repeated as if by rote. Then, when the noise dies down, business resumes as usual to await the next murder by the mob.
About two weeks ago, the mob went into overdrive at the Ipata Market Area of Ilorin, Kwara State. Their victim was a destitute woman who was accused of being a kidnapper. She was brutally beaten before later succumbing to her injuries.
Her family immediately demanded justice.
The odious dust was yet to settle when the mob again descended on a food seller in Mariga, Niger State. She was accused of blasphemy, and despite attempts to involve traditional rulers to settle the matter, she was quickly beaten to death.
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In 2023, in broad daylight in Jos, the Plateau State capital, a mob descended on Fwimbe Gofwan and ended his life on unfounded accusations of stealing. A year before Fwimbe’s death, it was the turn of Deborah Samuel Yakubu who was killed and burnt on accusations of blasphemy within the precincts of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto State.
These murderous incidents, which occur in different parts of the country, perpetuate a rabid tradition of widespread extrajudicial killings and hold up a blinding mirror to the twisted image of a country where life is extremely fragile and justice notoriously elusive. It mercilessly indicts Nigeria as a country in which no one has been held accountable for these deaths. The fact that murderers find safety in the number of the mob mauls whatever claim Nigeria has to security and dignity. It makes mincemeat of whatever pretences Nigeria makes about the sanctity of human life.
The threat the mob poses to Nigerians everywhere is understated and underrated by those in authority. But it is telling that every now and then; it rears its ugly head to subject some helpless and hapless Nigerians to the most painful of deaths. The lack of accountability when these things happen is the only thing more jarring than the gruesome acts themselves.
Nigerians who need no encouragement to lynch their fellow Nigerians for any reason at all need to ask themselves some poignant questions. Are they citizens or criminals? Are they human beings or savages?
These questions and many more may never be answered by those who form the cowardly mobs that require no second invitation to take life.
But they can yet be answered by the authorities in Nigeria, who have all the instruments they need to dig out those who do these things and subject them to the scrutiny of the law. That nothing is often done is testament to failure, dereliction, and injustice.
