Had
it not been for a witness who sadly chose to record the massacre of four
Uniport students, this would’ve been just another story we heard of or tweeted
about. The reactions would’ve ranged from, “Oh boy I heard o, it’s so sad” to
that one individual we all know would unfortunately say, “They deserved it’
without realizing the extent to which they were killed or with any prior
knowledge to how it all occurred. This is no way an article on how technology
has helped changed our life, but rather the self-realization that this type of
mob justice has been going on and until recently in this age has seen the full
light of day. No one can say they heard of it, because now you can see it for
yourself. So your judgment can no longer be clouded. You can dispute the
allegations leveled against them, you were not there, but you can not and will
not dispute the extent to which they were murdered. If you did not see the
video, I’m sure you saw the pictures, especially of an individual holding a
plank above a naked body on the ground covered in blood.
This is not a video of Mohammed Yusuf
being killed by the police nor is this a video of a police blown to pieces
trying to un-detonate a bomb. This is something else. Mohammed Yusuf may have
been killed by the authorities, but we take some relief knowing it happened in
the hands of the “right” authority, so we know exactly who to blame. But who do
we blame for Aluu 4? Everyone is pointing fingers at the students who
participated and even those who watched and said or did nothing (it is not easy
to go against a mob, especially a less than intelligent one as is the case).
Should we not also point the fingers at ourselves? Have we not for years
tolerated some form of jungle justice? The police practice it themselves from
time to time, point in case, what happened to Mohammed Yusuf. Do we not allow
some form of it in our secondary schools, where we think it’s cool to beat
someone alleged of theft, only to be embarrassed when we find out it was the
wrong person and are by then too ashamed to punish the right person, instead he
gets the right treatment and the innocent individual got the wrong one. How
many times have individuals been accused of crimes; then beaten by police
officers to get the “truth” out of them? How many stories have we heard growing
up in Lagos of people being burned by tires? How many people have claimed an
individual stole something by yelling, “ole” in public or that one commercial
motorcycle driver who claimed his passenger insulted the Prophet as a means of
revenge when they were disputing the passenger’s fee and a mob descended? So
you see; we too are to blame.
The authorities themselves have played
silent accomplices to this by letting certain people go, while accusing others
of something they know nothing of. So now when you feel justice would not be
handled by the right people, you take the law into your hands. The police
themselves don’t help matters. I wrote about the police and why they would
remain the way they were unless certain measures were taken into consideration,
parts of it were meant to be funny, but it had serious undertones. A few days
ago a Keke Napep driver flung his passengers out of his vehicle trying to avoid
the police check point at night. By the time I came out of my house to see what
was happening, one victim was lying on the floor, while the police thought it
was more important to shake down the driver. It wasn’t until a bystander and I
suggested they take the passengers to the hospital, which was right behind
them, did one officer call another to get the car.
Meanwhile one officer was busy slapping
the driver, as I explained to him you already have your perpetrator, everyone
knows he was wrong, there’s no need to go on hitting him, get the victims to
the hospital. I was suddenly confronted with the officer storming towards me
asking from whence I came and telling me to go back there. Had this not been my
neighbourhood, I would’ve picked up my pride and left. The police can be brutal
and so can we. We’ve accepted it as second nature. After seeing the treatment
meted out to an individual who was clearly wrong, I hate to be a suspect in
police custody. Were the aluu 4 from what we know so far, not suspects? Had they
been taken to the police, the outcome would’ve been different, but what’s to
say they would’ve not been harassed either way. The police have enough bad press
to know to behave themselves, but how they treat suspected criminals will go
along way in how society treats them as well. The police can not be trusted we
say, so we feel the need to trust ourselves and for our own satisfaction play
judge and juror. This isn’t two friends fighting where emotions get the best
of them, this is something regardless of one’s feeling at the time it took
place, was well calculated. For you to drag someone naked to a place, to
strategically place a tire over them and to proceed to carry out your brand of
“justice”, this isn’t simply your emotions, this is who you are, a killer.
