I was determined to stay clear of the news on
hearing about the lynching of the four University of Port Harcourt
students. Only a few “Nigerians have started again” and “God, save us and
everyone we know came forth from my lips. But the more I tried to push it onto
the hind of my mind, the more it came back to the fore like an abusive partner
influenced by the law of karma. Then it hit me – we are all thoughtless. More
on that later.
When
people die, the first set of my mostly invincible condolences goes to their
families. We are always taught that death is a phase that must be passed
through and not to be afraid of it, but nothing is really more painful than the
death of a loved one. If the death was preventable like the one in
Umuokiri-Aluu, more painful still. When people die, issues thought to be
serious fly out the window. The parents who lost their children would not have
the time to think about the advice they gave to the child about bad friends,
good grades and ‘graduate to get a good job’. The person who lost his or her
spouse would not mind fighting the last fight they had so long the now dead
spouse would stay with them forever. The child who lost a parent or a sibling
would definitely not mind being scolded eternally by this same people. The
death of a loved one has a paralyzing effect on our hearts and we all of a
sudden begin to see nothing wrong with what we dislike about them. we then pass
through denial, anger and anguish – blaming both ourselves and the dead about
the death of the dead – before finally accepting and forgiving but not
forgetting (this last part is easier said than done and it might take forever).
NOTE: The mood here is not insensitivity to the case at hand.
THE CASE AT HAND: nobody really has an idea of the
genesis of the whole story but most of it continued and finished in
Umuokiri-Aluu. This guy owed one or more of the four later-to-be-lynched
individuals. The debtor would not pay his debt and the four decided to strip him
of his phone(s) and laptop(s) as collateral. Turned out to be a bad idea. The
debtor raised an alarm that he had been stolen from and the people of Aluu
sprang into action. The four were burnt alive, beaten to stupor, and striped of
their clothing (in the reserve order). The sequence of activities that happened
next was over in a hurry. The news filtered back to the university and angry
students mobilized themselves to rain torches on the households of people in
that community. Most of the dwellers fled and the ones remaining got nabbed by
the police one by one. The only emotion prevalent in this story was that of
anger.
LESSON LEARNT: We (and by ‘we’, I mean Nigerians)
are all thoughtless people. Everybody involved claims or claimed to be a
Nigerian and whether we like it or not, their actions speak for us all. The
more the leader of the lynching mob took it upon himself to end the lives of
these young men and that lady using her camera phone to get every possible
angle of the killing, the more it became apparent ‘thinking’ has no place. In Nigeria, we are
too action-oriented. We make sure we cross the road faster than the approaching
vehicle. It is obligatory for us to turn our vehicles into that junction faster
than others. Even when it comes to buying, the queue was never made for Nigerians.
A friend just came out with a timely quote – “live fast and die early” and he
couldn’t be nearer to the truth. We are so wary of being cheated that our
actions drive away our thoughts. Just a little ounce of thought might have
changed the outcome of what happened in Aluu.
If
the four had thought better than to confiscate the debtor’s belongings, they
most certainly would have been saved. Even when they didn’t, if the debtor had
thought better than to scream “thief, thief” and tried to settle the matter
amicably (although at this stage, it’s a long shot), the killing might not have
taken place. After his false alarm, if the people of the Umuokiri-Aluu
community had just thought about clearing up this misunderstanding, of course,
there would have been a fortunate end to the story. even after the deed was
done, thoughtlessness reigned supreme as UNIPORT students burned down buildings
as if it would bring back the dead and police arrested everyone on sight
claiming “investigations has begun”. The amount of ‘ifs’ and ‘just thought’ are
just baffling. The regret that comes after the action is embarrassing.
I
once saw another lynch video some months ago. A man was kicked and hit with
items as hard as wooden planks and as soft as foams. He was put in front of a
moving car. In his seriously injured state, the planks and the foams were put
on him, a little fuel and a matchstick did the rest. A live roasting because of
a phone theft. After watching the video several times, my reaction changed from
“that serves him right” to “there are some sad people in this country”. The
argument that lynching occurs because poor folks are angry that an unfortunate
individual is stealing from their own very little merchandise is baseless. To
think that they were so angry with themselves that all their frustrations could
culminate in murdering humans as if they are clapping away mosquitoes is really
sad indeed. There was this other tale of a market woman who raised a false
alarm that the man that had just left her shop stole her money. Within minutes,
the man was mobbed. The woman later came out and said she had found the
‘stolen’ money. Of course the angry mob left one by one, shame personified.
Tragic, to say the least.
I
am a Nigerian (as if I had a choice of where I should be born or bred). But I
love Nigeria
with my heart and head equally. No matter how patriotic I can claim to be, I’m
not following Nigeria
to the innermost depths of the pit latrines of sadness, and of acting without
thinking. My apologies in advance if we ever reach that point.
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