BY KEN UGBECHIE

You saw the video. You saw human beings transmute to wild beasts, a happy mob. Happy to kill in the most gruesome manner; happy to make a bonfire of Deborah Samuel. And in one spell of bestial madness, they turned a once alive, pliable, promising young lady into a human barbecue. They did it for their religion. They claim killing was ordained by their God. Deborah’s offence was blasphemy. The interpretation of what constitutes blasphemy is only known to them. I have no problem with that. But I have problem with a mob that acts as the accuser and the judge. No fair hearing for Deborah.

There are Sharia courts in Sokoto. She was not arraigned in any of them. No advocate stood for her. None could even plead whether she actually committed the offence she was being accused of. To her accusers, blasphemy is death without recourse to due process, at least a hearing in a court presided over by a judge, any judge. No. This mob is different. Ferocious, furious, fiendish. A bloody mob, full of vile and bile.

Again, I ask: did you see that video? The mob was happy. There was joy all over them. A triumphal exhalation of conquest. They have conquered Deborah, a fellow human, a fellow student. They have revenged for their Master. To them, Deborah was a pesky infidel, a filthy sub-human who must never be tolerated in the community of a ‘holly’ mob. Strangely, they have clung to that time-worn accusatory term: Blasphemy. She was alleged to have committed the offence in the students’ WhatsApp group. But nobody has told the world the exact words used by Deborah. The other persons of other faiths need to know what brought her to early grave so they can be guided. Knowledge is powerful. Knowledge is a deliverer, an instructor, a teacher. Teach the rest of the people what constitutes blasphemy. Tell the world what Deborah said or wrote that should never have been uttered or written.

I have many Muslim friends and acquaintances. And I feel very comfortable around them. I have Muslim friends from Sokoto and I have dined and fraternized with them in Sokoto. No ill-will, no feeling of insecurity. Just last year, I was in Kano to attend the conference of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. One of us from Kano, Abdulhamid Majia, a great and awesomely personable human and Fellow of the Guild, hosted a few of us to a sumptuous dinner in his home. We ate and bantered. An entirely new experience for me: squatting on the floor to eat. And it was grand. Especially when you have a full ram barbecue, home-made healthy yoghurt and an assortment of drinks to serenade your taste buds. While there and everywhere, we didn’t remember religion. We only knew humanity.

Our religion ought to be humanity; that we are all human, that our life was given to us by the Almighty Grand Architect of the universe. No human gave us life, hence no human, no matter how highly placed, can take life. A human life; the life of Deborah, a pliant soul whose parents came from Niger state to Sokoto in search of a better life. Her parents had the presence of mind to send her to school. Yes, education ought to improve our content, conduct and character. The mob, a mix of students and hangers-on, showed no character. Not even the students among them demonstrably evinced any modicum of civility.

I am sufficiently worried about the case of Deborah. I ponder the fate of other students and non-students rendered helplessly vulnerable by religion and the blurred lines of what constitutes blasphemy. The Sokoto mob never looked like a people willing to be tamed. They were deliberate in their extra-judicial action. There was a visage of self-satisfaction about them. Their actions speak volumes of aberrant and devious promptings. Their chants tell of a hunter merry at the sight of his game. Deborah was their game; hunted down and barbecued.

And you ask: Where was security? The police, the DSS, NSCDC and the military. They are all in Sokoto. Deborah’s father, Garba Emmanuel, a brave but now broken man, recounted his efforts to save his daughter. He says the security personnel were present in their scores when Deborah was lynched and burnt. He believes that security operatives did not do enough as her daughter was killed in their midst. Who then is safe? Who do we trust in moments of mob rage?

And as it was in Sokoto, so it was in Lagos. Days after Deborah was murdered, it was the turn of one Dave Imoh, a sound engineer. Dave allegedly got into argument with an Okada (motorbike) rider over N100. A common sight in Lagos. Bike riders in Lagos have an inexplicable bond. Argue with one, you incur the wrath of others. Dave was mobbed. Clubbed to death by a legion of bikers. Strangely but not surprising, Lagosians watched the orgy. They could not intervene. Their intervention was to pull out their phones and record the ‘movie’. Just for N100, a father of two was killed in highbrow Lekki. What really is the worth of the life of a Nigerian.

Expectedly, Lagos state government has banned Okada in six local governments in the state. This is another episodic reaction. One incident, one knee-jerk measure. And we all go to sleep: no enforcement. In January 2020, this same Lagos government wielded the big stick against commercial motorcycles (Okada) and tricycles (Keke Marwa), proscribing their operations in six Local Government Areas (LGAs), nine Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) and 10 major highways across the State with effect from February 1, 2020. But it was never enforced.

Lagos has a Transport Sector Reform Law of 2018. Enforcement of that law and the 2020 ban could have saved the life of Dave. Never. In Nigeria, laws exist only on paper. Those who make the laws are the first to break them. Those who should enforce laws take delight in suborning such laws.

Deborah, Dave and those killed in Anambra, Katsina, Enugu, Adamawa and everywhere deserve justice. They are all human, then Nigerians. They cannot be murdered in their own country by persons sworn to evil. All good men must rise up against this evil. Playing the accuser and the judge in the case of Deborah is evil under the sun. A greater evil is justifying her death. Those who justified the mob action against Deborah, those who gleefully watched her die and those who carried out the killing will not escape the mob action of their conscience. Plaudits for the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar; Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi and others who openly condemned the Sokoto incident.

But we must arrest this steady drift to anarchy in the name of religion. Leaders in all faiths must teach their flock the rudiments of tolerance; the responsibility of virtuous communication so they don’t migrate from the tolerable to the offensive. Above all, they must teach them to recourse to the court of law in lieu of mob action. Extra-judicial killing is evil, inhuman and has all the props of satanism. It must never be allowed to flourish. Never!