By Emmanuel Onwubiko

In the political annals of Nigeria, this is not the first time that Nigerians in their large numbers are slaughtered by well-armed militia who share ethno-religious affiliation with the president of the country. The Fulani-speaking nationality has become notorious for the reason that some of its rogue members have armed themselves with sophisticated weapons similar to the type used by any military of a modern day nation.  These   militias are on the rampage all across Nigeria in what is regarded as a quest to dispossess farmers of their farms so as to fend for the growing numbers of their cattle.

For these killer gangsters who seem to be enjoying the Federal Government’s tacit approval, grazing of their cows is much more elevated in the hierarchy of scales than respecting the sanctity of human life. What makes the scenario remarkably historical is that both President Muhammadu Buhari and the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, are busy rationalising these mass murders, either expressly or through their political surrogates even as the killings remain unabated.

The lackadaisical attitude of the heads of all the security agencies which do next to nothing whilst these killings go on is making people to believe that the killings are officially licensed. The unfortunate thing, again, is that the killings which go on without concrete mechanisms to stop them and bring decisive justice to the perpetrators have exposed a serious lacuna, which should be corrected. The overwhelming powers of command and control ceded to the holder of office of President over the Armed Forces should be shared amongst the federal legislative bodies and the head of the Executive arm of government, so that if convincing evidence abounds to show a lack of willingness on the part of the Presidency to authorise immediate and effective crackdown on mass killings as those perpetrated  by Fulani herdsmen, the Senate can convoke and direct the Armed Forces to play their constitutional role.

Even as we debate the zero response level of the current administration to these mass killings, it must be borne in mind that the theatres of the grand mass killings orchestrated by Fulani herdsmen have now shifted to Southern Kaduna State, Benue State and Adamawa State. There are also reports of revenge killings of Fulanis in a part of Taraba State by another counter force. These killings, therefore, call for sober reflection with the aim of proffering a lasting panacea to the bloodcurdling violence of epic proportions which, at the last count, has resulted in the untimely and gruesome hacking to death of over 10,000 innocent Nigerians by the Fulani herdsmen.

What makes it more compelling for Nigerians to rise up and collectively demand an end to these killings is the fact that officials of government are busy providing irrational excuses for the mass murderers who are being treated as if they are above the laws of the land. The constitution is the sum total of the laws of the land and in a very unambiguous provision, Section 32 (1) states that all lives are sacred and sacrosanct and must not be taken extra-legally.

Related News

Legally speaking, the offence of murder is a very serious crime. In a technical sense, murder is also called culpable homicide. Black’s Law Dictionary defines homicide as the killing of one person by another and criminal homicide as the act of purposely, knowingly, recklessly or negligently causing the death of another human being.

Coke C.J equally defined homicide as: “When a man of sound memory and age of discretion, unlawfully killeth within any country of the realm any reasonable creature in rerun natura under the king’s peace, with malice aforethought, either expressed by the party or implied by law, so as the party wounded or hurt, etc. die of the wound or hurt, etc. within a year and a day after the same.”

Legal scholars therefore say that homicide is the legal term for killing a man or human being whether lawfully or unlawfully. In the Law repository of Nigeria, the law blogger affirmed that it is with the development of mensrea doctrine that there came into existence the distinction between lawful and unlawful homicide as well as different degrees of liability for unlawful homicide. The blogger recalls that what qualifies as a human being capable of being killed is provided for by section 307 of the Criminal Code as follows: A child becomes a person capable of being killed when it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother, whether it has breathed or not and whether it has an independent circulation or not, and whether the navel-string is severed or not”

A central statutory law in Nigeria called the Criminal Code provides that any person who causes the death of another, directly or indirectly, by any means whatever, is deemed to have killed that person, except in the cases explicitly provided. A case in point is encapsulated in the English case of R. v. Dyson, the accused who inflicted injuries upon the deceased more than a year and a day before the date of death, as well as further injuries within that period that accelerated the death, was charged and convicted of manslaughter, but had his conviction quashed on appeal for misdirection, because the trial judge directed the jury that they might find the accused guilty even if they thought that death resulted solely from the earlier injuries.

To be concluded tomorrow

Onwubiko, of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), writes from Lagos