Ochereome Nnanna
Jungle justice is ugly. It is not only a sickening sight to behold, it is also wrong because the victim, who most of the time is innocent, misunderstood or framed up by his enemies, is denied justice under the law.
That said, I must express my utter disgust at the kneejerk reactions of some highly-placed individuals to the lynching of 16 Northerners in Uromi. The first was the Edo State Government under Governor Monday Okpebholo. It hurriedly issued a statement contradicting itself. After suspending the government’s vigilante officials and assuring that investigation would commence immediately, the statement called the victims “hunters”.
Even the Chief of Defence Staff, CDS, Christopher Musa; President of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Daniel Okoh and National Secretary of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, Bishop David Bakare, also called them “hunters”. How did they know that the slain men were hunters since the investigation had not even started? Unfortunately, even the media, in a pathetic failure of discernment, also called them “hunters”, not even “alleged hunters”. If there was a hidden agenda to conceal the truth, all these elements would have unwittingly been complicit.
There was nothing in the circumstances that could have justified the tag of “hunters” placed on the victims. Reports had it that they were armed with military-grade assault rifles, daggers and machetes. AK-47 is not for civilian use. It is for the military and law enforcement agencies. It is also a choice munition of terrorists and criminal non-state actors. Hunters operate with basic firearms like Dane guns and within their immediate localities. They don’t travel hundreds of kilometres and just set up camps in any forests of their choice. Besides, they must register with the government of the state, operate according to its laws and be held accountable for their actions.
A thorough investigation will properly identify the victims, what they were up to, the circumstances surrounding the crime of lynching, those liable for the crime and the consequential or remedial actions for government to take to ensure justice and prevent recurrence.
Governor Okpebholo, in my view, betrayed the Edo people and diminished his position as the Chief Security Officer, CSO, by taking off into the North to beg his colleague governors. He was admitting guilt even before his “investigation” was activated. When you bend low, people will naturally ride you. The Northern governors, spurred on by their rabid rabble, demanded “compensation” from Okpebholo, which he readily agreed to pay!
If I had been in Okpebholo’s position, I would make a broadcast, suspend the leadership of the vigilante, call for calm and promise a thorough investigation. I would invite Northern Governors and interest groups to nominate representatives in the panel. I would also include the security agencies, the media and advocacy groups like Amnesty International, AI. I would give them two weeks to identify the perpetrators and victims, and unravel the circumstances surrounding the lynching. Then I would order my security outfit to henceforth search all inbound trucks and trailers, and impound any that carries human cargoes.
It would enable the whole world to ascertain whether the victims were innocent and law-abiding travellers or armed criminal “herdsmen” who have been invading communities, killing people in their farms, destroying crops to feed their animals, kidnapping for ransom and forcibly grabbing indigenous people’s lands. There is no state in the Middle Belt and the 17 states of the South that is free of this menace except, perhaps, Governor Alex Otti’s Abia State.
It was Governor Orji Uzor Kalu who settled people of Northern extraction on a parcel of land in Lokpanta, Isuikwuato LGA in Abia State, following the Sharia riot reprisal attacks in Aba in 2001. Kalu never consulted the owners of the land. Within 20 years the settlement had become a large “Northern” enclave because they were just grabbing as much land as they wished to expand. Successive governments came and went. None of them had the balls and guts to arrest the heinous crimes that were being committed in that enclave, which had become a safe haven for kidnappers, terrorists and human slaughterers masquerading as “herdsmen”.
Governor Otti simply walked in one day, demolished all illegal structures in the enclave and declared Lokpanta off-limits for all forms of night time activities. The state’s task force later combed the vicinity and discovered over 50 rotting corpses, possibly kidnap victims, in bushes around the commune. As usual, some Northern groups wailed blue murder. Miyetti Allah, the umbrella body of herdsmen, threatened to attack Abia State, but Otti stood his ground and secured his state. That is the primary work of a Governor.
In Edo, Plateau, Benue, Delta, Enugu and others, these terrorists from all over the Sahel are levying wars on indigenous communities. The law enforcement agencies pretend not to notice. Whenever vigilantes tackle them, that is when the law enforcement agencies will “germinate” teeth, swoop on the vigilantes and set arrested terrorists free.
Uromi people have been crying about the killing of their kinsfolks in their farms and communities. Okpebholo’s predecessor, Godwin Obaseki, was largely able to tame them with the state vigilante. Okpebholo could not continue in the same vein. He is more interested in keeping his post than protecting his own people, being an Uromi man.
Since the days of Muhammadu Buhari as president, the Federal Government has been a shameless enabler of the Fulani expansionism being perpetrated with armed herdsmen as foot soldiers. They refuse to declare them terrorists. We had hoped that the exit of Buhari and entry of Bola Tinubu, a Southerner, would end the expensive rubbish. We were wrong. Rather, Tinubu donated them a federal ministry and released a suspected Miyetti Allah terrorist.
Who will protect the indigenous people of Nigeria?
