By Richard Odilu
I changed the atmosphere in my office today by
showing my colleagues the video of the killing of the four UNIPORT students in
Aluu. Deep sighs accompanied with ‘My God’, ‘No’, and ‘Why na?’ rented the air,
followed by an outburst of curses and condemnation of the perpetrators of that
act. Silence followed afterwards, and the once lively office turned sad like we
were in mourning. Yes, we all were, we were mourning the loss of four young
Nigerians whom were cut down in the most cruel and barbaric manner by their
fellow compatriots, and I had a quick flashback of a similar event.
The event I remembered happened long before the age of the social
media, before the advent of Facebook, before twitter, and before the use of smart
phones. I speak of a jungle justice that happened at a time when I was in
junior secondary school form two, and I was thirteen years old. This was the
military era and the Lagos State Administrator; Buba Marwa had set up a crime
combating military police known as Operation Sweep which helped in no small
measure to bring serenity to the then Lagos crime infested society.
Word had gone round that a supermarket, not too far from
where I lived, had been robbed the previous day and goods worth thousands of
naira had been carted away. I learn later from a friend whose elder sister
worked as a sales girl there that the said theft almost caused the business
owner paralysis as he was elderly retiree and it was his life savings he had
used in setting up the business, but rather than call the police he had gone on
his knees and asked God to cause the thieves to show themselves.
Whether it was his prayers or sheer stupidity, the criminals
had revisited the same shop but this time they had come to celebrate the
victory of their theft the previous day. A passer-by, the landlord of the
property had noticed the inner light was still on; he got suspicious and
alerted his neighbors. The robbers were apprehended while they were eating shortbread, and drinking various fruit juices inside the supermarket. One of
them even wore one of the stolen gold rings on one of his fingers.
I stood-by with so many people and watched as the thieves,
three of them, and very young too, were beaten to a pulp. I watched as they
stripped them naked, poured the melting wax from some burning candles on their
skin, slapped, jabbed, and flogged them with fat thick sticks, hurled heavy
stones at them and succeeded in bursting the head of the eldest open and fear,
real fear, gripped me as blood pumped out of his head. The robbers screamed in
pain, a kind of pain that can be only imagined, and the women who stood by,
most of them mothers started crying and pleading for leniency. The business
owner whom couldn’t bear to watch the torture begged that they be handed over
to the police but his plea fell on deaf ears. Other male adults who didn’t
participate in the torture couldn’t stop them either as it was a risky thing to
attempt then else their compassion be questioned and they’ll be tagged as accomplices.
Like the Aluu scene, I had watched them put tyres round
their necks while they waited for the return of someone that had gone to fetch
petrol. That was when those women crying for mercy begged the most. They were
aware the boys where guilty as they were caught in the act but as mothers whom
have endured child labour they knew nobody deserved to die like that.
Miraculously, an Operation Sweep patrol team came on time
and whisked the boys away much to the relief of many people, and rumour has it
that it was either the landlord or the business owner that had called them on
the phone for the timely intervention.
As a young boy then I had hoped that that would be the last
time I will see or hear of such until this recent incident in Aluu. I have
heard different version of what happened and I am not in the business of
pointing fingers but I don’t think anyone, good or bad, deserves to die the way
those boys did, and what was very disturbing was that I noticed in the video
that the perpetrators enjoyed the show like the Romans would for sport in The
Arena many centuries ago in the old Roman Empire and recreated in the popular
series Spartacus.
I am not an indigene of Aluu, and I refused to see the sense
in what they have done. It was bad enough that they pummeled those boys like
one would pound boiled yams in a mortar, but they shouldn’t have killed them.
They should have handed them over to the police and the justice system, no
matter how slow or ineffective the institution has become; because it is better
that a criminal should go free than for an innocent man to die.
For those who will be quick to say they were not innocent,
let me ask who amongst us is innocent? Do I see a hand up somewhere? Common put
it down, we are all sinners and we sin on a daily basis, it’s only we have
formed the habit of justifying our sins.
Richard is
a writer, filmmaker, blogger, and he tweets @thenaijaseer
