A Country Without Justice -By Kene Obiezu

On their way to a wedding somewhere in Plateau State, a busload of passengers travelling all the way from Zaria was attacked in Mangu by armed men somewhere in Mangu. About a dozen passengers including women and children were killed and many others injured.

There is no context that can justify such an iniquitous act of injustice, but Mangu, the hometown of Governor Caleb Mutfwang, and the local government where he was once chairman, has become a land flowing with cold blood. These attacks more than confirm an unfinished business of blood.

In 2023, after particularly heated and close elections during which Caleb Mutfwang of the Peoples Democratic Party and Nentawe Yilwatda of the All Progressives Congress ran neck to neck, the PDP clinched a victory that was subsequently contested all the way to the Supreme Court.

But even before the matter went to the election petition tribunal in Plateau State, Mangu Local Government where Mutfwang hails from became the venue of many deadly attacks. The intensity and frequency of the attacks, which were later brought under control seemed to suggest that they were as much about insecurity as about politics.

The killings that came on the heels of the election quickly died down, but the deadly attacks which erupted out of nowhere against helpless, hapless and defenceless passengers exposed Mangu, Plateau State and Nigeria as a whole as a country without justice.

In what sort of country do citizens feel so secure in their abominable criminality that they attack innocent travelers and set their vehicle ablaze with them in it? In what kind of country do people travel with their hearts in their mouths, painfully aware that any moment could be their last as a result of insecurity?

It is incredible how many Nigerians have lost their lives in agonizing circumstances in the last few years, and just how lost the government appears to be in obtaining justice for them and finding a lasting solution to the killings.

From Yelewata in Benue State to Mangu in Plateau State, killers seem to lurk everywhere, locked into shadows stretched by injustice and insecurity. Yet, the Nigerian state presumes it has a social contract with Nigerians, which it demonstrably milks only when convenient.

There is also a lot not going for Nigerians at the moment. If the country is falling at the hands of a failing government, must citizens also turn on themselves and become killers of one another? Has Nigeria’s dark preclination to kill those it loves most fashioned killers out of Nigerians?

It is inconceivable that Nigerians would return to the Hobbesian state of nature where life was short, brutal and nasty. The shameful failures of the Nigerian state to secure the country and enable citizens to sleep with both eyes close should not be used to allow life to become a survival of the fittest, and citizens morph into cold, heartless and ruthless killers.

When crimes are committed and there is no accountability leading to justice, it is usually only a matter of time before the criminals who have not been put away strike again. Injustice only ever breeds more injustice.

As for those who kill because of politics, religion and ethnic affiliations, the shocking disdain they show for human life can never detract from the sanctity or inviolability of human life or from the fact that they will pay with as much in the near future.

Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com