By Bayo Oluwasanmi
NIGERIA has become a front-page material for all the evils in the world. Our hearts have become strangers to divine influence. Nigeria is home for abandoned monster of cruelty.
Lately, it has been an open season of killing in epic proportions across the country: The Mubi massacre, in which 50 students were executed in point blank range, the University of Maidugiri slaughter, and the murder of an undergraduate at Utman Dan Fodio University,
The latest of such dastardly acts was the gruesome murder at Aluu of four students of University of Port Harcourt. Aluu is three kilometers from the main campus of the university.
Friday, October 5, 2012 Biringa Chiadika Lordson, Ugonna Kelechi Obuzor, Mike Lloyd Toku, and Tekena Erikena were turned to hunted animals, clubbed, broken, and finally eliminated.
From the latest information we have, contrary to the peddled rumor none of the four was involved in stealing cell phones and laptops or in any robbery for that matter.
It was a case of debt collection that went awry.
According to reports, Ugo and Lloyd were cousins. Someone in the Aluu community was indebted to Ugo. And the debtor vowed not to pay the lender.
Ugo, popularly known as “Tipsy,” had enlisted the assistance of a man referred to as “fearless” to help recover the money. Along the way, they were joined by their roommate, Chidiaka and another friend, Tekena, said the report.
The fracas that ensued in an attempt to make the debtor pay led to the savagery never witnessed before in Nigeria. The people of Aluu in their surging torrent of evil and wickedness unleashed their uncontrollable frenzy on the four.
Even if, for the sake of argument, these students were involved in any kind of robbery, shouldn’t they be arrested and prosecuted in the court of law? When has vigilante, mob rule, jungle justice replaced the rule of law under a democratic rule?
What happened to the legal parlance of “innocent till proven guilty?” “the benefit of the doubt?” Does the punishment fit the crime?
As I watched the video, I was lost in thoughts. Dejection was on every line of my face. I felt much older than my age. I was miserable and with good reason – the apocalyptic of a doomed people, the sliding further of my beloved country into the abyss of shame and cruelty.
As I compose this article, my hand staggers between the alphabets on the keyboard. I’m overcome by horror of a great darkness. I keep asking myself: is this my country Nigeria?
Personally, it’s a bitter cup of humiliation and agony for me to watch my brothers being roasted as burgers and suya with flammable materials such as tires and gasoline.
First, the students were stripped naked. Then, they were clubbed repeatedly by a huge truncheon all over their body. No part was sacred. Every part was fully covered by the slam-bangs.
As if to make the slaughter easier tires adorned their necks as necklace. A generous quantity of gasoline was poured on them. And finally the four were set ablaze.
Looking at the video, the crowds were dressed up in their abominable best. They were in a perfectly understandable state of excitement. No doubt, there were visible signs of their collective admiration and affection for the killing of the four.
Nigeria is surrounded by sinful influences and corrupting pressures. We’re notorious for our immorality, idolatry, treachery, cover up, and polytheism all leading to a dangerous chain reactions. The Aluu Four killing served a text book example of our extended barbarism.
Nigeria has become the proverbial barren tree flaunting its pretentious foliage. Like the barren tree, it spreads its pretentious branches aloft, luxuriant in appearance, and beautiful to the eye, but yielded nothing but leaves.
Seems to me Satanic agencies are feverishly working overtime to make Nigeria a forest of 160 million demons. Every day, we’re treated to cornucopia of ancient evils.
With the spate of killings, kidnappings, and other indescribable butchery and decapitations of lives, our humanity and civilization are being threatened and persecuted.
From a simple covetous thought to the coldly calculated murders of the four UNIPORT students, we’ve become insensitive to these barbaric acts so much so that such killings were greeted with clamorous throngs. These times are different!
I doubt whether in any country of the world – not even in Hitler’s Germany – humanity and civilization have ever been less, more bent, terrorized, and indeed vassalized – than in Nigeria.
Nigeria is suffering from horrible void!
Right from antiquity, government has had to grapple with two distinct functions, namely: negative and positive. Its negative functions include the prevention of violence, protection of life and property as well as the enactment of criminal laws and seeing to their enforcement.
Government’s positive responsibilities, among others are to accelerate the hopes and aspirations considered common and basic to the great majority of citizens.
In both functions the Jonathan administration has been derelict, delinquent, aloof, and asleep as in a state of death. This administration has been absent since day one.
Is anyone or group of people in charge of this lawless country called Nigeria?
There is a vast difference between putting one’s nose in another people’s business and putting your heart in other people’s problems. The president’s heart is far from the problem of the most vulnerable among us. He doesn’t give a damn!
The video of the killing feast of the four students should serve as a wakeup call as it were to “freshen up” Mr. Jonathan’s leadership abilities and priorities and indeed to jar him back to reality.
Mr. President, where are you in all this? Are you sure you’re still in Aso Rock? Do you watch the news? Do you read the papers? Do you feel the pulse of Nigerians?
Where is your anger over the butchery? What plans do you have to rescue the nation from cheap deaths and ballooned fears that are sending Nigerians into their early grave? When are you going to address the nagging issue of home grown terrorists?
If I may remind you sir, your position is a high honor and a sacred trust. Your tender recognition must be given to all – the strong and the weak, the high and the low, and especially the feeblest and the lowliest of our citizens.
True, Nigeria has for several years now been in a perpetual state of anomie. But now, we’re sliding gradually into intellectual and moral anarchy.
When we recall one year of your presidency characterized by depressingly inept governance, there appears no faith in the present or in the future that things will get better. The only movement in the “Transformation Agenda” is the stirring of the wind.
What happens (if any) to the daily briefs of your senior national security adviser on the state of security of the states? With well over 40 advisers or so, what excuse do you have?
The Boko Harams and other savages running around killing defenseless and harmless citizens pose a furnace of testing for your leadership abilities.
Mr. President, as a sage once reminds us, “The paradoxical truth is that happiness of man doesn’t consist in liberty but the acceptance of a duty.” To say the least, we’re disturbed and disappointed the way you’ve handled the duties of your office.
To do nothing, is tiresome because you cannot stop and take a rest.
Your priority, Mr. President, should be and must be the safety of Nigerians and their property. Stop listening to your hungry advisers. Real wisdom consists of listening to opposition views.
Don’t listen to the Household gods who give worthless advice, fortune-tellers who predict lies, and interpreters of dreams who pronounce falsehoods that give no comfort. “You’ve got to do your own growing,” says the Irish Proverb, “no matter how tall your grandfather is.”
One would have expected these random killings to provoke national outrage from our citizens especially the representathieves in the National Assembly.
What sort of country is this? Not a sigh is breathed, not a pain felt, not a grief pierces the soul of our elected representathieves. It’s business as usual!
Nigerians have developed native immunity to violence and murder. Where is our collective sense of outrage? shared sense of shame? the same sense of sorrow? the same sense of loss and the same sense of anger over the senseless killing of the four young, vibrant men. This is a different world!
Governor Rotimi Amaechi are you in Rivers State? Or jetting around the exclusive exotic paradise overseas?
With pained surprise, mothers where is your rebellion? Can you hear me? Where are your tears? The murder of the innocent four of your sons should spur you to bare breast demonstration all the way to Aso Rock? Come out in your droves and save your children!
To the parents and families of the four, may God grant you the strength to bear the loss.
Biringa Lordson, Ugonna Obuzor, Mike Lloyd Toku, and Tekena Erikena rest in peace.