I want to be numb, but my soul cries too loud for me to
ignore. I am supposed to have grown accustomed to pain, but things happen that
remind me that I am a man and that in the heart of man, pain has an abode, try
as much as you can, you can never escape its grip.
As I type this, the voice of two promising young men cut
down in their prime by the kind of unmitigated blood-lust that our country have
come to identify with, booms out from my laptop speakers. Like voices from the
grave, the young men cry out that there “ain’t no love in the heart of the
city”. It is eerie, like prophesies of that kind are, especially when one
considers that the boys had pleaded for their lives to flesh and blood men that
refused to show them a little love, people that refused to spare their lives.
Jungle justice, the general term for what was meted out to
those boys who Nigerians have come to identify as the Aluu4, is nothing new,
but it is not that old either. In the days when our fathers walked proud with
their destiny in their hand and the state of their stomach a question of how
much their hand can till and the benevolence of the old Gods, mob jungle
justice was not obtainable. Yes, our fathers killed when they have too, but the
Gods of the land frowned upon reckless killing and apart from when sacrifice
demanded it, they frowned upon extra-judicial killing. Thieves, when caught are
usually paraded round the village and punishments that usually do not go beyond
well-placed canes to the buttocks are meted out. Back then, the shame of being
paraded round the village as a thief was enough detriment and banishment for
bigger crimes more so.
Then came the west with their tailor made solutions to every
foreseeable problem. They brought new laws and frowned on the ones that have
worked here for centuries. We got a police force that replaced the communal
checks and balances; we got courts to dispense the new justice, we adopted new
ways and left the old. As the new ways failed to answer the yearning for
justice, a yearning that in the past were mostly satisfied upon appeal to the
old Gods, we decided to take the laws back, back from the new ways that failed
to satisfy us, back from the courts where justice could be bought with money,
back from the police that have become complicit. That gave birth to jungle
justice, a mob justice, a faceless justice, a travesty of the natural order of
things and the new way, a bastard form of justice.
I don’t know who coined the phrase “jungle justice”, but I
know it has little to do with backwardness or lack of education. If anything,
it stems from deep pain, from suffering, from hurt caused by those who in the
past broke the law and went scot-free. This may be hard to understand when
you’ve had something dear stolen from you at gun point, or watched those you
love hurt by people who aim to take by force of arms. Anyone who has suffered
thus tends to be unsympathetic to victims of jungle justice. It is justice all
right, that’s why they call it “taking laws into your own hands”.
Jungle justice would have been fine and good if the society
could ever manage to match the crime with the punishment, and ensure that the
crime is proven beyond reasonable doubt. This, is the tragedy of the Aluu 4.
The community did not investigate enough, did not even try to
investigate—beyond alleged forced confessions. As such, the boys were murdered
pure and simple and those involved should be brought to book. I recall the
people in Ibori’s community celebrating his genius for theft and known
criminals walking away with chieftaincy titles in my native Igbo land. Even
now, big thieves are in our offices and rule over us, thieves that deserve
worse than those boys got. If our big thieves are from Aluu, they won’t be
giving the jungle treatment, they would instead be celebrated and choice goats
will die to sing their prowess as thieves. That is the kind of country we live
in, the poor hurt the poor and the thieves smile to the banks and glory.
I call for a “bringing to book”. This is rather and urgent
call, this bringing to book, because Nigerians are throwing caution to the wind
and mob killings are becoming a major attraction. The Aluu 4 are not the first
to be videoed while being brutalised and killed for alleged offences. We’ve
have stories like that from Lagos, Abuja and so on. These images and videos are
available on the internet and mostly show the faces of the perpetrators.
Surely, it doesn’t take rocket science for the police to have reacted against
this or issued wanted pictures sourced from the videos. The Nigerian police,
our so-called law keepers, as usual waited for social media to roar before
acting. Too late, too late for the Aluu 4, too late for thousands of Nigerians
that have suffered the same fate, too late for grieving families, too late for
us all.
Thinking about it, I know very few have the stomach engage
in such barbarity, but when you stand by and watch those who do commit the act,
you are equally guilty. True that one man’s voice may not make a different, but
one plus one equals two. Next time, don’t wait for someone else to speak up
against evil, do it and you will find that you are not alone.
The voice of those two, now back with their ancestors—who
would surely be shaking their heads at how far away from the path we as a
people have strayed—continues to burn my ears as I write. I feel a poem coming,
I suppress it. Naija is already poetry, only not one in any positive motion, at
least, not a motion towards any light. Darkness becomes us, the choices we
make, make this so. Let’s move towards light.
First published in DailyTimes.com.ng
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