Rising mob justice worry Nigerians

The burning to death of a yet-to-be identified couple on Monday, September 2, 2024, in the Orogwe-Ohii area of Owerri-West Local Government Area of Imo State, for allegedly robbing a motorcyclist and stealing his motorcycle, has again brought to the fore the frightening dimension that mob justice, popularly referred to as jungle justice, has assumed in Nigeria.

According to the report, the couple usually operated around the community and neighbouring villages, but on that fateful day, they were caught as they were absconding with a stolen motorcycle after robbing the motorcyclist at a gunpoint.

“The couple was well known in the community but no one knew they were involved in motorcycle snatching until they were caught.

“They were caught while trying to dispossess a man of his motorcycle along the Orogwe/Ohii Road. Because the youths and community vigilantes were already enraged by the ugly trend, they refused to hand them to the police. It was terrible,” a source said.

The Imo State Police Public Relations Officer, Henry Okoye, was said to have warned that the course of justice would not be served if the public persisted in taking the law into their hands.

He warned the public against taking the law into their hands in expressing their grievances and urged them to allow the police to do their job of law enforcement.

“Allow the police to do their work. Any suspect should be handed over to the police for proper investigations. The police have deployed their team for investigations to apprehend the perpetrators,” he said.

Earlier this year, on March 25, police officers attached to the Itire Divisional Police Headquarters, Lagos, received a report from a man about a group of hoodlums vandalising his vehicle.

The officers promptly responded to the call and arrested one of the vandals, who was handed over to a security guard on the street. Unfortunately, the vandal was reportedly set ablaze.

Two days later, police officers rescued two suspects from jungle justice for dispossessing a lady of her phone in the night at Bode Thomas in Surulere area of Lagos.

In August 2023, a suspected armed robber was beaten to death while attempting to rob a resident in Agege, Lagos.

Also, a cleric, Femi Kolade, lamented the death of his 27-year-old son in the hands of an irate mob in Lagos.

His son, who reportedly had a history of mental illness, was said to have been mistaken for a thief and was beaten to death at Alakara area of Ayobo in Alimoso Local Government Area, Lagos.

There was also a report about 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 to stupor, stripped, tied to a stake and was about to be roasted but for the intervention of some leaders of the community.

Similarly, there was also a report a couple of years ago about two patrol marshals of the Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency (KASTELEA) who walked through the valley of the shadow of death but escaped by the skin of their teeth.

They narrowly escaped being lynched by an angry mob over allegation 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 four students of the University of Port Harcourt, who were lynched and set ablaze in Aluu community, Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State remains reference point whenever the issue of jungle justice is being discussed.

However, despite the fact that some people who were involved in carrying out mob justice in the past had been brought to justice, the trend has continued.

The position of the law is not in doubt. Extra-judicial killing is unlawful. An analysis of the trend would require religious, sociological and legal perspectives to really unravel the push factors.

There is a belief in certain quarters that there is anger in the land due to the level of criminality in the society, a development that has been aggravated by biting economic hardship in the country.

Consider what 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 the law enforcement agents because when suspects are handed over to them, they set them free if their palms are greased.

“For example, recently, a suspected ritual killer, who was 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

Reverend John Akachi Ahamzie of the Holy Fire Overflow Ministry, Ikeja, Lagos, attributed it 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 crimes, like stealing, should have one of their hands cut off, that could be equated to what we have 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 told DAILY POST.

He views jungle justice as a bad 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 lives and property, have gone asleep, giving way for evil to rule the society, gives rise to such development.

“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 is 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 passes 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 argued.

He posited that the scourge seems to be on the increase because the government is asleep.

According to him, there seems to be no will power on the side of the government to supply 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 because sometimes, they can do it wrongly and punish or even kill innocent people or mete out punishment that is not commensurate to the offence committed. Sometimes, it may be an overkill, like killing a mosquito with a bomb,” he said.

He advised that the only way to stem the rising tide of mob action was for the government to understand that its primary responsibility to the people is security of lives and property.

Sociologist speaks

A sociologist, Dr. Isaac Otumala believes that lynching is made possible most often because of anger.

He stated that the anger in the heart of people, who most often gather when an alarm is raised that a kidnapper or ritual killer 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 that when you are angry, there is no space for thinking. And at that feat of anger, they tend to dish out what they think is justice to the suspect,” he said.

He advised that due process must be followed before somebody who is deemed to have committed a crime is pronounced guilty.

This, he said, was necessary because a lot of innocent lives had 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 further said: “Sometimes, when people allow the police to arrest such suspects, their godfathers would go behind to secure their release from the police custody and they would go scot-free, despite the gravity of the crime committed.

“That is why the people, most often, decide to mete instant justice instead of giving opportunity for such persons 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.”

He 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, most often, fall victims, it should be discouraged by all well meaning 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 (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 Rights, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other conventions and protocols to which Nigeria is a signatory.

He stressed that going by such conventions and protocols, such a 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 due process of 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 told DAILY POST.

But, he agreed that mob action has a root cause, saying, “However, 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.”

He also put the blame squarely on the justice system, which has not lived up to the people’s expectation.

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 through the judicial process, justice will still be served.

“Therefore, when people hear of 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 wrist watches are 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 will exonerate them, they take laws into their hands, believing that that is how justice will be better served.”

He listed the inherent dangers in mob action to include: “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 a mistaken identity? I may probably not 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 recognizing and understanding the source of the problem and responding as swiftly as possible.

He also suggested that taking one or two proactive steps by the security agents to show examples of why people should not kill others through mob action 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 an example 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 man, we cannot travel through that path otherwise every person is endangered,” he submitted.

Rising mob justice worry Nigerians

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