What
bothers me is how these issues will pass us by again, not because we do
not feel bad for the dead in Mubi and Aluu, but because, many more will
soon die in the same circumstances and we would simply have to move on
to grieve with the next set of victims and their families, leaving the
current ones to their own fate. When will it all stop?
Violence in Nigerian universities peaked in the 1990s. Students’
heads were chopped off and hung at school gates in Enugu, entire hostel
blocks were serially held hostage in Benin City, professors were trailed
and killed in Makurdi, students’ mothers were killed in their homes in
Owerri, the list was endless. Confraternities had taken over and the
battle for the soul of campuses across the country, were fought between
rival cults (as they were/are more commonly called) on the one hand and
between cults and school authorities on the other. As was the case in
most schools, the authorities had pretty much lost the fight and stood
on the sidelines hoping the battle between rival fraternities never
boils over too quickly, too often.
While all this happened though, the one thing that struck me was how
the media treated the issue. Most of these violent clashes never made
news. When they made news, they were tucked somewhere in page 12 or
thereabouts. It was never priority, or at least given that status. That
was probably the biggest reason why heinous acts flourished for many
years, aided of course by the fact that we lived in military times, when
the law took a back seat to force.
Those days are not completely behind us as we still hear the random
news about cult clashes in our higher institutions today, even if they
have definitely gotten a lot less frequent. I look back now at people
from that generation and some things start to make sense. A lot of the
young men, who have caused Nigeria the most violent pain in recent
times, come from that generation. Whether it is with militancy in the
south or kidnappings in the east or terrorism in the north, a lot of the
people leading these groups happen to be in the category of people who
were either in a higher institution at the time, or had their peers
there. Basically, they have been groomed to see that violence and crime
is the easiest way to get your message across, regardless of whose blood
is spilled. Sadly, this generation may do worse.
Last week started on the most shocking note when on Monday, news came
in about killings on a Polytechnic campus in Mubi, Adamawa State. Most
people’s instincts immediately screamed ‘Boko Haram’. In one fell swoop,
28 or 43 or 44 students (depending on who you are asking) had been
called out by name, brutally murdered and laid out in the open like
livestock at an abattoir. Following the killings, students have come out
to say that they tried to warn their colleagues when they knew the
killers were on campus but the recent destruction of mobile facilities
by terrorists in the Northeast had made services really poor. There were
others who say they actually got through, especially to security
agents. But nothing was done.
Theories are flying all over about there being a student union power
struggle and that the killers were on the losing end. Some other theory
says Muslim students could not stand a Christian led Student Union
Government and so decided to kill the newly elected President and his
team. Yet another simply says the group Boko Haram, in their
ever-changing style, simply just came up with a new chilling way to make
a statement without using explosives. For me, all I ask is why? Why
have we let ourselves sink so low; to a stage where young men who should
either be in school building a proper foundation for themselves or
building empires like a certain Facebook owner who is within their age
group, are instead engaged in killing their colleagues and having their
dead pictures splashed all over Facebook?
As if that was not enough, the University of Port Harcourt and a host
community called Aluu, decided not to be outdone. The story is that
that armed robbers have held that community hostage for a while and they
had been waiting for a scapegoat. As fate would have it, 5 UniPort
students were apparently caught in an uncompleted building within the
community. They were subsequently accused of stealing the laptops and
mobile phones seen with them and immediately dragged out in the open.
The pictures and videos (which I couldn’t watch) of their beating,
eventual unconsciousness and final burning with tyres round their necks,
are some of the most stomach churning clips you would see anywhere.
What’s worse? The perpetrators laughed and joked all through with
witnesses enjoying it well enough to have it captured on their mobile
phones.
Jungle justice is almost an accepted form of punishment in Nigeria
these days, borne out of a lack of faith in the security and judicial
systems. Many have turned a blind eye when armed robbers get that
treatment. But when unarmed students who ‘allegedly’ stole material
worth less than the tuition at Law School, are killed so gruesomely with
their bloody images splashed all over the internet, it becomes tough to
keep calling it ‘jungle justice’ because taking anyone’s life, is
simply murder.
What bothers me is how these issues will pass us by again, not
because we do not feel bad for the dead in Mubi and Aluu, but because,
many more will soon die in the same circumstances and we would simply
have to move on to grieve with the next set of victims and their
families, leaving the current ones to their own fate. When will it all
stop?
We are grooming a future of killers and criminals who can only do
more harm than good to this country. So while you shrug and feel like
your nice little home is hundreds of miles away from these gory murder
scenes, think 20 years from now and the sort of people who will be in
charge of Nigeria…
YNaija.com
President
Goodluck Jonathan and his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, are
two of 144 persons expected to provide evidence in the on-going trial of
Henry Okah, who is accused of masterminding the deadly Independence Day
bomb blasts in Abuja, in 2010.
