JUNGLE JUSTICE IN NIGERIA: MY THOUGHTS.

Edited By: Asykobi

For as long as one can remember, there has always been “jungle justice” in Nigeria. All it takes is for somebody to shout “ole” (thief) and anybody seen running away – the suspect or not – is apprehended, subjected to a kangaroo court before being beaten mercilessly to a pulp – or even killed in the most gruesome fashion imaginable.

It is wrong.
Yes ,the suspect might have committed a serious crime – murder, kidnapping etc – but it’s not up to the members of the public to take justice into their own hands. The police and courts, however inept they are, are there to deal with these kinds of things.

In the eyes of the law everybody is innocent until proven guilty. A man about to be lynched will not have a fair trial at the hands of a baying mob. And most important of all tragic mistakes can be made. How many times have some unfortunate ones happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Take the case of the ALUU 4; four Uniport students who were murdered by a lynch mob in Aluu , a town in Port Harcourt, in 2012 for a crime they were totally innocent of. How many more innocent people have been killed by lynch mobs who think they have the moral right to play judge, jury and executioner? Countless and unless something is done there will be more. And to the lynch mob how does it feel to have blood on your hands? Anybody participating in a lynch mob is guilty of MURDER and they are no different to the person they’ve just killed. It becomes a simple story of the kettle calling the pot black; one murderer killing another because they have no legal right to kill anybody.

In the past few days a video, that has gone viral online, has emerged of what appears to be a young boy being lynched and set ablaze by a mob for stealing. What could he possibly have stolen that could warrant him being beaten to death and then set ablaze? And the adults meting out ‘jungle justice’, don’t they have brothers, sisters or offspring the boys’ age that they can’t show mercy? If you want to punish him ,beat him (reasonably) and hand him over to the police. The sad thing is that most Nigerians are hypocrites; when you see a real thief, like a politician who has stolen billions of naira from the public coffers, you bow down and prostrate in front of them. You show reverence to a big thief and lynch a small insignificant thief – double standards especially when a thief is a thief!

It’s high time our lawmakers who like to busy themselves passing tolotolo laws pass a law that outlaws ‘jungle justice’! Nobody has the right to play judge, jury and executioner taking the life of a criminal suspect however heinous their crimes might be. The courts are there to pass judgement and not the people – the rule of law is what prevents anarchy and what makes us different from animals that kill each other at random. And in the words of the Bible, ‘let he who has no sin cast the first stone!’

“It is the duty of every good citizen not to encourage guilt of mob-riotous proceedings” – Sir John Hay Athole Macdonald

While mob justice is not unique to Nigeria, the failure of criminal justice institutions and agencies to prevent its occurrence or punish those who engage in it, have projected the vile anomaly into public space as acceptable. Although there is no mob justice victim or incidence data-base; or a systematic information gathering system on the theme, there is regular media reporting of cases of lynching and setting alight of persons accused of crime.

The range of alleged offences for which mobs have exerted punishment in Nigeria is wide. On one end of the spectrum are violent criminal offences such as murder, assault, armed robbery, rape, kidnapping, on the other are offences against property- theft, fraud and misappropriation. Other classes of offences for which mobs have punished suspects are: accusations of witchcraft, magical theft of genitals, blasphemy and violating religious texts, violation local customs and taboos and non-observance of religious and cult rites among others.

Often, the execution of mob justice is spontaneous and triggered by a group of bystanders who witness a perceived violation of social mores and then initiate the process of violence in remedy of the perceived wrong. This illegitimate violence triggered by few actors who serve as the accuser, judge and executor, deploy slaps, sticks, stones, iron rods, machetes, petrol and other combustible substances in enforcing their slant of justice.

The Nigerian constitution and other criminal legislations explicitly outlaw the instant longing for redress without recourse to the established channels. Section 36(1) of the 1999 constitution guarantees in all instances the right to fair hearing; Section 33(1) of the same constitution assures every citizen the right to life and punitively prohibits the deprivation of life except in execution of a court sentence or other approved circumstances; Sections 252 and 253 of the Criminal Code outlaw assault in all its manifestations. Thus there are enough laws in the Nigerian legal corpus prohibiting the act.

However, the effectiveness of legal guarantees is not just a matter of detailed institutional design, it is also a question of interconnected cluster of values that underpin formal institutions and the success of a law or legal policy rests squarely on a number of extra-legal circumstances, least of which is public perception and a cluster of cultural values. There is a correlation between law and the social milieu within which it operates, and that makes public perception on the performance of the criminal justice important.

Mob justice is one of the key consequences of the failure of criminal justice system in Nigeria to timeously and efficiently manage the processing of criminal case. There is unmistakable low public confidence in the capacity of the security services and the court system to fairly and independently punish crime according to law. A particular tragic case highlights this point- an accused serial rapist and murderer (referred to as Badoo) was allegedly apprehended in Ikorodu, a suburb of the Lagos and handed over to security services. Whatever happened, he found his way back to the street and apprehended soon thereafter by members of the community after allegedly violating a minor; members of the community summarily set alight the victim this time. This incidence forms one of the mosaics on the tableau of systemic incompetence and mob justice in Nigeria.

The frightening fatal swiftness and arbitrariness of the process of mob justice in Nigeria makes it particularly susceptible to abuse and settling scores. The ‘Aluu-4’ episode underscores this fact; four university students who allegedly went to recover a debt, were set-up by the supposed debtor and were lynched in the most gruesome manner. The ‘Aluu-4’ tragedy is not a one-off happening and it highlights the vulnerability of citizens to the vagaries of the practice of mob justice in Nigeria and the low value that is placed on human life in Nigeria.

Mob justice is not objective and has no quantum for measuring the punishment that is given to persons accused of crime. People have been lynched for offences ranging from- picking pockets, petty stealing, robbery fraud, witchcraft, blasphemy and violating social taboos, depending on the ‘mood’ of the mob. What is the just in a system that allocates the same punishment for stealing a tuber of yam and murder? In fact, it is not odd to see people joining a mob to punish a person accused of crime without knowing the particular offence the victim is alleged to have committed.

The siren song of mob justice for instantaneous punishment of criminal violations is injurious to social order as it undermines rule of law, increases uncertainty and risk, disrupt social communication and appeal to reason, discourage alternative dispute resolution processes, undercut property rights and has a tendency to set Nigeria on the slippery slope into anomie; but unfortunately, the practice is fast becoming a part of the story in urban centres in Nigeria.

Even in instances when mob justice seem alluringly appropriate, the best argument that one can bring up against the resort to self help is simple – self-preservation and self-interest – do you want to be that next hapless victim, who never was given the fair opportunity of explaining what really happened? And according to a Yoruba proverb – the one who listens to just one side in adjudicating is a super villain; any system that punishes a man without appropriately hearing out the suspect is unjust, unfair and indecent.