When international human rights organisations and local civil society groups conclude that life is cheap in Nigeria, they are not guilty of exaggeration. With a Human Development Index of 0.532 and a burdensome population of over 200 million people, Nigeria is ranked among the worst countries to live in, and is ranked exceedingly low in Human Capital Index. The cheapness of life, far worse than even poverty, has made living in Nigeria a veritable nightmare. But that cheapness is compounded by governments that can’t tell the difference between good and evil and are therefore unwilling to take the trouble to mend their brutal ways on the one hand, and a people whose diverse and puerile perspectives make them vulnerable to and even complicit in their own brutalisation on the other hand.
Last Thursday, to the country’s relief, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) surprisingly described the continuing killing of Shiite members by the police as tantamount to making life worthless in Nigeria. The police, like the federal government, have become punitive, excessive, and brutal. In their unending confrontations with Shiite members, particularly the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), the police have not sought any civilised means of riot control. Indeed, to tackle every protest, the police simply wield and use assault rifles, relying less and less on riot gears, truncheons and tear gas. Inevitably, in every protest, the argument is not about whether any protester was killed but how many were killed.
Shiites in Nigeria marked their Ashura procession on Tuesday. Days before the procession, the police had warned leaders of the sect that marches were forbidden, and that if the Shiites went ahead to dare the police, they would get their comeuppance. Said the police spokesman, Frank Mba, in response to a question on what the police would do if Shiites insisted on conducting their procession: “What do you want me to say? Let them (Shiites) carry out their procession first, then you would see what the police would do.” The answer was menacing. It was not clear whether the police realised the question was a leading one, the kind of question that tried to probe whether the police and the federal government which banned the IMN in July realised the anomaly, not to say the short-sightedness, of banning an entire religious organisation.
Though the government later clarified that the Shiite ban was intended only for the IMN, and not the entire Shiite body, they were too muddled up in their thinking to explain how they would be able to differentiate the IMN members, who remain Shiites, from the entire Shia organisation when the sect kick-starts the procession. It turned out, however, that differentiating the Shiites was a luxury the government and its increasingly flagrant police were uninterested in making. To the government, both the IMN and Shiites are coterminous. Indeed, for years, despite a Court of Appeal ruling that nullified the police’s reactionary perception of processions and protests, the police have adamantly stuck to approaching every protest as both unauthorised and a threat to the government. The provisions of the constitution mean nothing.
Thus when the Shiites, true to their oath, organised their Ashura procession on Tuesday, the government, which had issued threats and equated the Shiites with the IMN, deployed force against the sect. Though the police claimed no one was killed, Shiite spokesmen insisted some 15 of their members were mowed down in cold blood. It was in the context of these alleged killings that the Human Rights Commission deplored the police approach to managing street protests, concluding that life had become inconsequential. Said the Executive Secretary of NHRC, Tony Ojukwu, through a statement signed by the agency’s spokesman, Lambert Oparah, “These acts of extra-judicial killing by the police have made human life inconsequential in Nigeria.”
Mr Ojukwu is not guilty of hyperbole. By every yardstick, human life has become meaningless in Nigeria. This meaninglessness of life did not, however, begin with this government; it has been a long-running and long-standing curse, regardless of whether it was during military rule or in a democracy. Under the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, for instance, whole communities were razed down by troops under the pretext of smoking out murderers and other criminals. Zaki Biam in Benue State and Odi in Bayelsa State were sacked by troops purporting to look for criminals who murdered some soldiers. Not only was the government’s response unconstitutional, it was also disproportionate. Sadly, national lawmakers and the public were indifferent to the killings and connived at the bloodletting, both arguing that the killing of soldiers was the ultimate defiance of authority which must never be condoned. How the massacre of innocent women, children and the aged amounted to a lawful response seemed to have escaped the public. Nor could anyone prove that sacking whole communities amounted to a sensible deterrent.
Since the police have embraced the strong-arm tactics of bloodily repressing protests without any censure from the government or the undiscerning public, the gory practice has continued apace. It surprised no one that a few days ago, the police simply came out with guns blazing to battle students of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), killing two students in the process. They claimed no one was shot dead, but students and eyewitnesses argued that the police shot directly at the protesting students. Life indeed remains inconsequential in Nigeria, with many families losing their children and loved ones to needless and brutal police shootings. The brutality continues because the public and their lawmakers approve the tragedy.
Indeed, the story of Nigeria now is appropriately titled For Whom the Bell Tolls. Fleeing suspects are shot at indiscriminately, with the bullet sometimes hitting innocent passers-by. Law enforcement agents, government officials, magistrates, some of them acting independently, herd innocent people and suspects into overcrowded detention facilities and jails. Unquestioning judges also liberally interpret the laws of the land to help paranoid governments at state and federal levels put citizens needlessly in jail, often for periods exceeding what their alleged crimes indicate in the statutes. It is, therefore, not surprising that the wasting of lives has continued. The conspiracy by the government, an uncritical public, a conniving judiciary, an opaque criminal justice system, unprofessional and homicidal law enforcement agencies, and an unresponsive legislature have all combined to render Nigeria poor, unlivable, inefficient and violent.
The Human Rights Commission’s unequivocal and censorious statement describing life in Nigeria as inconsequential, though not sufficient to trigger massive change, will hopefully stir the conscience of the country and instigate the people and their lawmakers into courageously attempting to change the climate of fear and repression that has hobbled the development and modernisation of the country. These needless killings must stop. Surely the government has not lost the capacity to feel the pains of grieving families who are burying their loved ones, some of them in their youth, simply because the law enforcement agencies can’t develop a modern crime fighting and crowd management tactics to tackle police deviants and angry citizens. Enough of the bloodletting