The hearts of
true patriots across the globe go towards the families, friends and
acquaintances of the 46 young souls wickedly executed in Mubi, Adamawa State on
October 1, 2012 for reasons yet unclear; and the ill-fated UNIPORT Four hacked
and lynched over alleged stealing of telephone sets and/or laptops (on October
5, 2012). We cry as a nation diminished by these unjustifiable and devilish
actions; a people traumatized by cascades of heinous devastation and butchery
all across our blood-drenched landscapes. We totter from one devastating
incident to another – a situation made more terrifying by the apparent
helplessness of our helmsmen.
While we mourn
with those who mourn, we should never trivialize the deaths of these young
people and many others cut down in their prime all across the killing fields of
Nigeria, by growing silent in our anguish and sweeping the very horrible acts
under the carpets of public amnesia and indifference. We must all raise our
voices, stoke the fire of ceaseless agitation and protests until the wicked
perpetrators of these brazen murders are exposed, prosecuted and dutifully
visited with the full weight of the law.
Beyond the gang
of evil men that supervised the two killings, we must investigate the roles
played by law-enforcement personnel, the so-called vigilantes and Aluu communal
ring of admiring onlookers. Every participant in the Port Harcourt horror
should be thoroughly interrogated and dealt with appropriately. While the grieving
students of Federal Polytechnic, Mubi, and the University of Port Harcourt are
prevailed upon to moderate their sorrows with the words of China’s most famous
philosopher and political theorist, Confucius:
‘’We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.’’
The rate and
coldness at which extra-legal hurricane justice is spreading across the lands
give impression that our rulers have lost control of the ship of state…just as
all have become their own local governments (providing for self almost all
basic amenities that define fair living standard), the Nigerian people appear
to now want to be their own police force, military brigade and such units of
coercion and repulsion. In a land where the government makes itself look like
an uncaring, bungling road-side mechanic, the people (unled and unaccountable)
do as if they have a right to take spanners and hammers to knock anyone out of
existence.
Our people must
not allow the atrocious conditions and seeming hopelessness of living in
Nigeria to lure them into swapping their humanity and innate goodness with dark
wickedness and malevolence. We must not surrender to the encroaching breeze of
poverty and disillusionment in such a manner that we now have no qualms
murdering and strangulating our children, friends and neighbours at the
faintest excuses. No manner of crime, no level of official complicity, no
resentment or provocation adequately justify inflicting instant jungle justice
on one another without due process of fair hearing, independent appraisal and
the whole gamut of the rule of law. We are not murderers; we are not
anarchists; we are not terrorists (even in spite of the brutal efforts of Boko
Haram); we cannot therefore afford to add bloody names to our long list of
inglorious ‘achievements’ in the global village.
The ‘government
of the people’ must start to sleep less and protect the people more
proactively, both the rich and the poor. Nigeria must no go on like a giant
mistake that cannot be corrected.
By Femi Akintunde-Johnson (Writer, Journalist & Author)
Contact: fajswhatnots@yahoo.com
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