The death of Cynthia was but a few months ago, the Mubi massacres are yet to be accounted for and we have once again dealt ourselves one deathly blow too many. I have heard varying versions of the tales that led to these young men’s death, none of them holds enough water to be pretense for the daylight grisly murders. Words fail me at every attempt to describe the few seconds of the video I was able to muster courage to watch. It is the worst of human inhuman action I have witnessed.
The first account I read was that these boys were thieves who specialize in stealing Laptop and mobile phones, then the one about the boys being cultist. Followed by the latest story that was credited to a fifth boy who escaped by brandishing a gun in the heat of their arrest, the fifth boy was a supposed cultist who followed the boys to help retrieve an unspecified cash debt from an indigene who owed one of the boys, the others just followed to help their friend retrieve his cash, in the spirit of comradeship.
I do not know which of the versions to believe but whichever I choose to favour , these boys still do not deserve to be lynched the way they were, honestly no one does. I have asked myself why a whole community or some part of a community would descend on young men in that horrendous manner and I am yet to find a suitable answer apart from the claims of recent robberies and killings by an armed robbery gang on the village. Even at that, everyone deserves a fair hearing as enshrined in the universal declaration human rights, article 10: “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.”
Those people involved in the multiple murders probably never heard of this declaration but they certainly know of Nigerian Police, am sure they know also of law courts, why don’t they give these boys a chance to fair hearing? Only God knows! The people of Aluu haven’t killed any of the thieves in Abuja yet, they have not killed any of those of who steal our commonwealth and launder it away in Swiss banks, yet they kill young children for alleged stealing, I am yet to see any of the supposed phones and laptops these murdered boys stole. Who amongst the Aluu murderers was without sin? Yet they cast stones, they cast the first and the last stones too.
I have replayed the event in my head several times and all the times I arrived at the doorstep of more and more questions, more questions than answers! These boys were merely wasted by a group of bloodthirsty men in broad daylight. I wonder if there was no police “shop” in Aluu whose officers could have stumbled on these avoidable and unlawful killings. We can ask questions all we want. The truth is that we have turned psychotic and we now kill our young men in groups. The land where our mothers choose to bear us has turned on us. Men are on rampage for blood and we no longer care whose son or daughter is killed. It is gravely surprising how some people encourage students to kill the villagers in reprisal, as if it will bring the slain boys back, in Lloyds (one of the boys) own prophetic words "How can the seeds grow when the garden is weary?"
I have cried my own tears and the river of pain on my face brings to mind these excerpts from the words of the great Lebanese poet, Khalil Gibran: “Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong as though he were not one of you, but a stranger unto you and an intruder upon your world. But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also…And that the corner-stone of the temple is not higher than the lowest stone in its foundation.”
Are the Aluu killers saints, even if the boys were thieves?
We may cry all we want but we must from now on be on constant guard to prevent a future occurrence, the police must do all necessary to comb out those killers and if it is true that a fifth boy was involved, this boy must be fished out to answer the foregoing knotty questions and perhaps identify the bloodthirsty killers.
“How can the seeds grow when the garden is weary?” Lloyd (Big L) in a song titled “Heart of The City” by Yetty, Big L and Tipsy (RIP).
RIP boys.
