A Gruesome Murder and a Gutless Country
Something terrible happened Wednesday, September 27, 2023. On that day, in Jos, the capital of Plateau State, a state that has known no little chaos since the early 90s, a young man, Fwinbe Gofwan, set about his usual business. He owned a car, which he used to make rounds rather than yield to the depression that is the staple of unemployment in Nigeria. He never made it through the day, though. Right in the glare of the midday sun, which bore down with relentless intensity, Fwinbe was accused of stealing the car he actually owned. There and then, one of Nigeria’s hastily constituted mob courts, made up of some of Nigeria’s most vicious criminals, tried him. There was no Christ there to adjure the one without sin to cast the first stone, so rather than drop their stones one by one and leave like the accusers of the biblical woman caught in the act of adultery, the stones rained down on Fwinbe instead. The mob court only leashed their stones and bloodlust when they felt the life drained out of Fwinbe.
In the immediate aftermath of Fwinbe’s death, shock coursed through all who knew him: his schoolmates at the University of Jos and the College of St. Joseph, Vom, his friends and family in Jos and beyond, and even those who knew him only in death.
As emotions dictate when a wound is still fresh and raw, the authorities promised to bring his killers to book. More than four months later, the investigation risks running the futile race of similar investigations in Nigeria, which collectively tell the story of a country where there is no justice.
There is no justice in Nigeria. If there was, Fwinbe’s killers would have been brought to book; his heartbroken family would have received some respite, and countless Nigerians, wounded by his agonizing death, would have been soothed. But there is no justice here, and it is the authorities that are to blame.
In every country where the law is worth its letter, and law enforcement worth its weight in gold, every single citizen or visitor knows that eyes of the law are always watching, not in the suffocating kind of surveillance that smothers privacy and sets off a firestorm of fear and repression, but in an awareness that holds to account offenders and would-be offenders.
In such a country, crime prevention is proactive and criminals run only so far before they are nabbed. But in Nigeria, it appears the law is not only blind but crippled — the handiwork of those who heinously place themselves above the law.
In May 2022, a seemingly innocuous audio recording on Whatsapp in the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto set off an inferno. By the time the flames were doused, 22-year-old Deborah Samuel, accused of blaspheming religion had been burnt beyond recognition. While alarm bells chimed across the country, Deborah’s killers found defenders in some highly placed religious leaders. Until this day, the perpetrators of the heinous crime have not been duly punished.
Crime is infectious. Once a crime is successful somewhere, it is only a matter of time before it is repeated elsewhere with chilling efficiency. Despite the conspicuous presence of regular courts in Nigeria, mob courts still thrive and with the swiftness and ruthlessness of their proceedings and punishment, they indict Nigeria’s regular courts.
In the frenzy they whip up and in the chaos they conjure where everyone wielding a stone or a stick, is an emergency judge, jury witness or prosecutor, the accused is not allowed a word in what is perhaps the gravest defilement of the sacred pillars of natural justice.
Where are Fwinbe’s killers now? Presumably running free and wild, patiently waiting for the mob court to reconvene.
Like many home before him, Fwinbe’s ghost will continue to haunt Nigeria until his killers are brought to book. A country that looks away while death ferries away its citizens is as gutless as a mother hen that refuses to fight back when the hawk preys on her chicks.
Kene Obiezu,
