Voice of Emancipation: Extrajudicial Killings in an Unjust Nigerian Society

By Kayode Emola

Last week, I read an article about an innocent man who was killed by a mob for an offence he did not commit, and it reminded me of when I lived in Lagos. I don’t know if it is a Yoruba-wide phenomenon, but mob justice is very common in Lagos, where the crime rate is high. The following account of what happened is graphic and may be upsetting for some readers.

This innocent boy was killed just because he was accused of stealing a woman’s ₦20,000 which she was hoping to take to the market. When asked about the money, the boy whispered through trembling lips, “I didn’t do it,” begging for his life.

However, his plea went unheeded as the first blow landed, coming from behind, followed by a stick that cracked across his shoulder. Another hit followed, with stones flying at him from unseen hands. His blood splattered on the ground, and the taste of iron filled his mouth. He cried “Mama,” whimpering, barely audible, but his mother wasn’t there. Only the angry crowd whose eyes were glazed with bloodlust, whose voices fed and were in turn fed from each other’s hate.

Within moments, a tyre was brought from nowhere, then came gasoline and the strike of a match. The boy was in flames, and the smell of the fire made the mob scamper a little. The boy’s hand reached out weakly, but to no avail; he cried for help, but none came. His breath became shallow, and his heart slowed. Even as he wanted to run, a two-by-two stick was used to force him back to the blazing tyre until he was burnt to ashes.

A few minutes later, someone ran into the square with the shattering news: the boy was not the one who took it. The accuser’s daughter had seen the money on the counter and taken it when no one was around. That is when it dawned on the crowd that an innocent young man had been killed for an offence he did not commit. The mob stood frozen, staring at the burnt body they had just destroyed; the grey sky wept for an innocent child killed because of false accusations in a society where the justice system has failed everyone.

One could try to write this off as an isolated story of one innocent boy killed because of a false testimony, but this pattern frequently repeats itself, time and time again, with no one doing anything to address the ugly situation. We have seen so many innocent people killed on the streets because of false accusations, both in Lagos and elsewhere in Nigeria, on some occasions with even the police standing by, and doing nothing.

This is what happens when society is broken, when justice is served only if you have money to pay for it. If even just one sensible person had advocated for the innocent boy to be handed over to the police so that the proper judicial process could take its course, how different might the outcome have been? However, we all know that the justice system in Nigeria doesn’t work that way.

Many genuinely guilty parties need do nothing more than bribe the police and are released without any charges. This is the reason that many people resort to mob action to get the justice they long for, and, as a result, in Nigeria, and especially in Lagos, it has become the norm. Every person feels that street justice is the only way to get restitution for any perceived breach of their rights, rather than appealing to the formal judicial process.

The problem is, when the accuser becomes the judge overseeing their own case, you cannot expect to see real justice reign. That is why we have lost too many innocent people in our land to crimes they did not commit.

And yet, I witnessed a case around 2010 when I was doing my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Nasarawa. A young man who was serving in my local government, in the same Community Development Service (CDS) as I didn’t turn up for almost two months. I wondered what had happened to him, as he was always punctual for the weekly meeting.

A close mutual friend of ours informed me that he had experienced a trauma: he had driven into a pedestrian who lost his life. My first thought upon hearing that he had killed someone was, how can he still be alive, and not even in prison? Our friend explained to me that in Northern Nigeria, when such things occur, they term it as “kadara,” meaning destiny.

She explained that since it was destiny for the pedestrian to lose his life in that way, the jungle justice system cannot be applied to our friend who was driving. Instead, he was asked to make restitution to the family of the victim by means of covering the cost of the burial, and, having done so, he was let go.

I was amazed that this could happen in Nigeria. I told my friend that had this happened in Lagos, the driver would have fled the scene because, if caught, he would most definitely be lynched by an angry mob.

This story taught me a valuable lesson: that just because something has been normalised in our society, that doesn’t make it the proper practice. Some things can and should change, especially if it is costing the lives of innocents.

I cannot say that the extrajudicial killings going on in Lagos will stop overnight – or, indeed, will ever stop whilst the Yoruba remain in Nigeria. However, it is a menace that cannot be permitted within our society when we get our independent Yoruba nation.

However, the only way to prevent people from resorting to street justice is to strengthen our judicial process such that justice is guaranteed no matter who must be held accountable. If not, this may be only one of many problems of Nigeria that will become our nightmare when we declare our sovereign Yoruba nation.