By Sunday Ani ([email protected])
Last Saturday was also a lucky day for a suspected robber, Animashaun, who escaped death by the whiskers after he was nabbed during a dawn robbery operation in the Agbelekale area of Abule Egba, Lagos. The suspect, who claimed to be 19, was beaten black and blue, stripped and tied to a stake. But for the intervention of some leaders of the community, he would have been roasted. In fact, the mob had gathered disused tyres to do the job before the elders intervened.
Similarly, two patrol marshals of the Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency (KASTELEA) will not forget Wednesday, August 23, 2017, in a hurry. That day, they walked through the valley of the shadow of death but escaped by the skin of their teeth.
The traffic officers narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob over allegations that they were responsible for a tricycle accident at the popular Katsina Roundabout. The officials fled the scene, abandoning their motorcycle, which was promptly set ablaze. The mob also fled the scene of the incident before the arrival of armed security personnel.
If mother luck smiled on Animashaun and the traffic officers, doom was the portion of four men suspected to be kidnappers who were hacked to death on August 6, 2017, by irate youths in Tella, Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State, who also threw their bodies into a river.
The victims were allegedly on the verge of kidnapping a high net-worth individual in the community when they met their end. They were promptly apprehended by the youths, who didn’t waste time in deciding their fate. They were brutally clubbed to death on the spot.
The Taraba State Police Public Relations Officer, Deputy Superintendent of Police David Misal, confirmed the development, stating that investigation was on to ascertain the identities of the victims and those behind the mob killing.
Weeks earlier, a policeman in the commercial city of Onitsha, Anambra State, was also lynched. The ill-fated cop was one of four policemen posted to Aliko Dangote’s new depot in the area. They were alleged to have been responsible for a fatal accident, which claimed the lives of a pregnant woman and her two children at a checkpoint in the area.
Passers-by alleged that the accident was caused by the policemen who mounted a roadblock and were busy extorting money from people on the highway.
In the Ikorodu area of Lagos, three suspected members of a notorious ritual gang, Badoo, were lynched recently. The suspected Badoo members received “jungle justice” at Ogijo in Igbo-Oluwo. According to residents, the suspects were caught around 1:00am on that fateful day, while trying to break into an apartment near a gas station. They were alleged to have applied engine oil on their body.
A witness, Fatai Odulana, said some of the residents, who kept vigil, raised the alarm when they noticed strange movements in the area and that led to their arrest and eventual lynching. In fact, Lagos has recorded a number of extra-judicial killings in recent times. Many of the victims are suspected kidnappers and ritualists.
Ironically, an upsurge in jungle justice is being witnessed in spite of a recent conviction of three people by a high court in Rivers State for their role in the killing of four students of the University of Port Harcourt five years ago. Police Sergeant Lucky Orji, David Chinasa Ogbada and Ikechukwu Louis Amadi, alias Kapoon, were sentenced to death for their role in the dastardly act of October 5, 2012, when four students of Uniport were lynched and set ablaze at Aluu community in Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State. The victims were Ugonna Obuzor, Toku Lloyd, Tekena Elkannah and Chiadika Biringa.
But, despite the Aluu 4 judgment, which many thought would serve as deterrent to others, the tide of jungle justice continues to rise. So, why do people prefer to take the law into their hands?
What the law says
The position of the law is not in doubt. Extra-judicial killing is unlawful. Some people who spoke on the development agreed that Nigerians are angry due to the level of criminality in the country, which has been aggravated by biting economic hardship. So, mob action is a result of frustration in the land.
Daily Sun respomdent, Jim Momoh, said: “Nigerians are frustrated almost on all fronts. People go through hell to make ends meet, hence they snap at the slightest provocation. Again, people seem to have lost confidence in law enforcement agents because when suspects are handed over, they set them free, if their palms are greased. For example, last week, a suspected ritualist handed over to the police in Port Harcourt by a vigilance group disappeared from detention. So, life has lost its sanctity in this clime. ”
Religious angle
Rev. John Akachi Ahamzie of the Holy Fire Overflow Ministry, Ikeja, Lagos, attributed the trend partly to the biblical injunction in the Old Testament. According to him, the code of law as contained in the Old Testament preached “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” In other words, people who are caught committing crime like stealing, should have one their hands cut off, which could be equated to what has come to be known today as jungle justice.
He said: “But that has changed. In the New Testament, according to the doctrine of Jesus Christ, you don’t repay evil for evil.”
He views jungle justice as a sign of the socio-political and economic breakdown in the system. He said a situation where the police who, by law, are required to secure life and property have gone asleep, giving way for evil to rule the society, gives rise to such developments.
“That is why people, most times, arise to take the bull by the horns and that comes with inherent disadvantages like when innocent people are lynched. In the Old Testament, it was said that when a thief is caught, he is to pay seven times the value of the thing stolen and sometimes their hands are cut off. But, in the spirit of Christ, it is expected that whoever is accused of wrongdoing would pass through the process of the law to ensure that the person is wrong before punishing him or her. But when that system breaks down, it gives rise to things like lynching,” he said.
Ahamzie posited that the scourge seems to be on the increase because government is asleep. According to him, there seems to be no willpower on the side of government to provide real governance in terms of protection: “It does appear in our society that security is for the rich or people who can afford it. The ordinary man is left to cater for himself, and that is what has given birth to people rising up to take the law into their hands.
“In other words, what the government could not do, the people are rising up to do because nature abhors a vacuum and that comes with inherent disadvantages as, sometimes, they can do it wrongly and punish or even kill innocent people or mete out punishment that is not commensurate with the offence committed. Sometimes, it might be overkill like killing a mosquito with a bomb.”
He advised that the only way to stem the rising tide of mob action was for government to understand that its primary responsibility to the people is security of life and property.
Human rights
Dr. Josephine Okei-Odumakin of Women Arise for Change blamed the rising incidence of jungle justice on the failure of government. She argued that government institutions, whose responsibilities are to arrest and prosecute perpetrators of such acts, have failed to rise to the occasion.
She argued that stemming the trend requires not just immediate action from government but also concerted efforts from all segments of society, particularly the media and the civil society.
She said: “As an organisation, at the level of Women Arise for Change, we have been at the forefront of the campaign against jungle justice. As we speak, we have a lot of ongoing programmes and engagements aimed at checking this terrific menace.
“This ugly practice has advanced to the point where even our urban communities have become theatres for perpetrating this very barbaric conduct. In recent times, we have seen cases of people who have been lynched and set ablaze on mere suspicion of being thieves, kidnappers and the likes.”
She called for radical and urgent action from the government to halt the impending anarchy, which is likely to occur if the development continues unabated.
Okei-Odumakin said: “Our society is becoming helpless and a radical step has to be taken to avoid a situation where the entire society would become so unsafe, giving way to anarchy to reign supreme.”
She, therefore, suggested that, “First, government must criminalise any form of such acts. Every person who has been arrested in connection with jungle justice must be speedily prosecuted to serve as deterrent to others. Here, our security agencies have critical roles to play. Again, I want to appeal to the media in general to increase awareness and educate the people against jungle justice in our society.”
Sociologists speak
A sociologist at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos, Dr. Isaac Otumala, was of the view that lynching has been made possible because of outrage. He stated that the anger in the heart of people, who most often gather when an alarm is raised that a kidnapper or ritualist or robber has been caught, greatly accounts for why such suspects are lynched.
“You know that anger is a momentary madness. At that moment of anger, the crowd becomes unreasonable and that is why they resort to mob action. If there is a space for them to think, they would probably not do that but it has been proven when you are angry there is no space for thinking. And in that feat of anger, they tend to dish out what they think is justice to the suspect,” he said.
He advised that the legal process must be followed before somebody who is deemed to have committed a crime is pronounced guilty. This, he said, is necessary because a lot of innocent lives have been lost through jungle justice.
“Most of the time, the real culprits are always clever and they are never caught. So, you find out that an innocent passerby at that moment becomes the victim, who pays dearly for the sins he or she never committed,” he remarked.
He, however, said: “Sometimes, when people allow the police to arrest such suspects, their godfathers would go behind the scenes to secure their release from police custody and they would go scot free, despite the gravity of the crime. That is why the people decide to mete instant justice instead of giving the opportunity for such suspects to escape from police custody.
“I think the appropriate government agencies should sit up and do their job to avoid delayed justice, which always leads to denied justice. Such persons that have been known to have committed heinous acts should not be allowed to go without being brought to book.”
Otumala argued that, if jungle justice were to be given to those who were caught red-handed in the act, one could even find a middle ground to justify it but since it has been established that innocent people often fall victim to mobs, it should be discouraged by all Nigerians.
Legal perspective
A human rights lawyer, Malachy Ugwummadu, said there was no justification for mob action. He said the right to life is clearly stated in Section 33, sub-section 1 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He went further to say that the same right to life is protected under other international human rights instruments, including the African Charter on Human and People’s rights, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other conventions and protocols to which Nigeria is a signatory.
Ugwummadu stressed that, going by such conventions and protocols, this right cannot be taken away except in accordance with the rule of law, particularly regarding the judgement of a court.
“Therefore, there is no legal justification for mob action or lynching. In other words, before such a right can be taken away, such a person must have been subjected to the due process of the law by a competent court of law as to be able to legitimately take that right away, except of course a prisoner is trying to escape and, in some circumstance, security agents want to repress insurrection and all that,” he said.
However, he agreed that mob action has a root cause. He said: “A society that toys with the fundamental conditions of social harmony and economic survival also toys with the certainty of that right. When people are driven to the brink regarding their capacity to sustain that same life, they become desperate and will do anything, including taking the lives of their fellow human beings to be able to survive. That is what you have in kidnapping, armed robbery and others.”
The lawyer put the blame squarely on the justice system, which has not lived up to the people’s expectations.
He said: “At the heart of mob action is the loss of confidence in the judicial system to secure the processes and maintain the integrity of the processes to give everyone the assurance that justice will still be served. Therefore, when people hear of an Evans, the kidnapper, or that so many well-to-do persons who have been charged with corruption cases running into billions of naira and dollars and they hear very little in terms of punishment and sentences, whereas they hear that people who stole tubers of yams, goats and wristwatches were convicted and sentenced to years of imprisonment, they don’t need to be politically enlightened or properly schooled in the legal processes before they lose confidence. They just lose confidence.
“Mob action is a clear manifestation of the loss of confidence of the Nigerian people in the judicial process that is supposed to guarantee a standard process by which justice is served. So, they believe that rather than exposing the persons whom they have caught in the act to a criminal justice process that could exonerate them, they take the law into their hands, believing that that is how justice would be better served.”
Ugwummadu listed the dangers in mob action: “First, you have committed twice the offence against the same person you are killing, because you have taken the law into your hands and you have also murdered somebody. Second, who says there cannot be mistaken identity? I may probably don’t like your face and I raise an alarm and before you know it, a jungle justice system has taken its course and an innocent person is gone. Third, it jeopardizes the peace and security of that entire community and by extension the country in which it happened.”
To curb the menace, he said law enforcement agencies must rise to the occasion by recognising and understanding the source of the problem and responding as swiftly as possible. He also suggested security agents taking proactive steps to show examples of why people should not kill others through mob action, which would equally go a long way in tackling the menace.
“The police must be able to identify the ring leaders and bring them to justice. They must make examples with one or two cases, so that the society will know that this is not acceptable and certainly not the way to go.
“The resentment of the people is clearly noted; it is understandable but as a society regulated by the rule of law and not rule of the jungle, we cannot travel through that path otherwise every person is endangered,” he said.