EDITORIAL: Justice for victims of the Uromi-16 lynching

Emotions were astir, and rightly so, from a broad spectrum of Nigerians following the lynching of 16 youths in Uromi, Edo State, penultimate week. It was a most barbaric and horrific act, which once more demonstrated how cheap life has become in the country.

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The victims, travelling from Port Harcourt in Rivers State to Kano State, in a Dangote Cement truck, for the last Sallah festival, met their untimely deaths in the hands of a vigilante group, which suspected them of being part of a band of kidnappers terrorising the areas, due to the 16 dane guns found inside the truck. They had claimed to be hunters and pleaded with the assailants to spare their lives.

But their pleas were not heeded. Instead, they were beaten to pulp and, one after the other, dragged out of the truck, necklaced with used tyres, doused with fuel, and then set ablaze. This happened on Thursday, 27 March, in broad daylight, around 1.30 p.m., along an expressway. A macabre drama like this must have taken a reasonable length of time to be completed. As such, where effective policing is in place, the tragedy might have been nipped in the bud.

These graphic details portray the Nigerian State as an arena in which life is no longer sacrosanct, and it’s unprotected by the political authorities that should preserve it. The 1999 Constitution as amended, unambiguously spelt out in Section 33 that: “Every person has the right to life and no one should be deprived intentionally of his life.”

Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and human rights activist, in his excoriation of the dastardly act, said that over 50 Nigerians had died under such cruel circumstances in more recent times. This is believable, as chronicles of some of the ugly incidences, lend credence to his claim.

Perhaps, the most notorious was the roasting alive of Deborah Samuel, a student of Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, in 2022, by her fellow students on campus. In her killers’ warped reasoning, her offence was in making comments purported to be blasphemous in a class WhatsApp platform.

Quite unbelievably, it is claimed that the State Security Service (SSS) operatives on duty at the college security post, where Deborah took refuge, did not bat an eyelid as she was dragged out and gruesomely lynched.

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There was also the case of Florence Chukwu, a teacher in Bauchi State, killed in 2006 by her students, for taking away the Qur’an from a student who was reading it, while an English language lesson was on. The same fate befell Christiana Oluwatosin, a teacher too, in Gombe State in 2007. Equally, Bridget Agbohime, a 74-year-old, was lynched in 2016 in Kano, for telling a young Muslim to stop the habit of performing ablution in front of her shop.

The Edo State Government, on whose watch this tragedy occurred, said the local vigilante group involved in the gruesome act operated illegally, not having been registered with the Edo State Security Corp. Irked by all of this, the governor, Monday Okpebholo, immediately sacked the Commander of Edo Security Corps, Friday Ibadin, a retired commissioner of police.

About 14 suspects have been arrested and transferred to Abuja for this act of jungle justice. This is the right step. Justice must be served in this case to curb such bestial conduct from taking root in our country. Unfortunately, the murderers in the earlier mentioned cases are yet to be brought to book.

In Deborah’s case, which happened when Aminu Tambuwal, a current senator, was the governor, the court discharged and acquitted the suspects in 2023, given the prosecution’s repeated failure to appear in court. Decidedly, this was an official act of perfidy and violence to the country’s statutes.

More so, it was instructive that neither the school authorities nor Tambuwal’s government informed parents of Deborah of the tragedy, let alone assist them with her burial. Nothing could be more evidential of perverse official encouragement of this criminality.

These evil acts expose the failure of law enforcement – policing and intelligence gathering in the country. Governor Abba Yusuf of Kano, whose state’s indigenes were the victims in the present disaster, was apt in noting that, “This tragedy serves as a lesson to all … (especially) all leaders across Nigeria to ensure the safety and protection of all citizens, regardless of their location.”

The Edo and Kano states governors have commendably handled the situation well, thus dousing the growing tension and clamours for reprisal by some angry Arewa youths. Mr Okpebholo, last week, visited his Kano counterpart, Mr Yusuf, on a trouble shooting mission. They both visited families of the victims and sued for peace; just as Mr Okpebholo promised compensation to the affected families, and vowed that the culprits would face the full wrath of the law.

This is what matters most, when viewed within the context of the Nigeria Bar Association’s (NBA) reaction to the egregious incident. The body argued that, “allowing mob action to persist undermines the very foundation of our criminal justice system and portrays Nigeria as a society where lawlessness prevails.”

ALSO READ: The Uromi 16 and the problem with Nigeria, By Reuben Abati

While it is true that the about 300,000 police personnel cannot be in every inch of Nigeria’s space, yet their mode of operations make the work more predisposed to abuses and exploitation by non-state actors to cause havoc. The larger society remains scarcely policed, with over 100,000 of the police personnel posted to guard public office holders and the wealthy in the society, who could afford to pay for such privileged security protection.

In all, the Uromi killings is an indictment of the Edo Police Command and SSS operatives in the state, for being so slack in their duties to the extent that a vigilante group not profiled or registered, is not only in operation but is audacious enough to take the law into its own hands. This negligence of duty is inexcusable!

Amid worsening insecurity across the country and vigilante groups sprouting in every state to fill the policing void, it is not unlikely that similar illegal security outfits exist in other states. No governor should wait for the repeat of the Uromi wanton killings in his domain before taking decisive action to curb the activities of these non-state actors.

Viewed critically, it is the Nigerian State and its failure to find a solution to the kidnapping epidemic that has assumed entrepreneurial dimensions for two decades now, that fostered the Uromi avoidable murders.

Some critics have argued that the carrying of Dane guns by youths on hunting expeditions, across states spanning over 1,000 kilometres, at a period of high national insecurity, lends itself to suspicion and could be abused. There is merit in this argument. Even at that, an effective policing system ought to have detected this much earlier, and stopped it.

The fragility of our national cohesion and unity are evident. The powers that be and security operatives should not upset the apple cart with negligence of their duties or covert official approval of extra-judicial killing, as Deborah’s murder agonisingly evinced.