A State Service Of Graves -By Ike Willie-Nwobu

A country gradually dies when its most vulnerable citizens are allowed to die with neither consequences nor repercussions.

In a case that has sent shockwaves coursing through Nigeria, about 37 miners have died in custody after they were arrested and detained by the Nigeria Civil Defence Corps, Niger State command. With official clarification bound to take forever in typical Nigerian fashion, the rumor mill has charged into overdrive. With a legion of allegations competing for a legion details. Suffocation as well as torture has been mooted together with the claim that the  young men died when a noxious chemical was sprayed in the cell where they were held.

Whatever the course, their death is another damning confirmation of living in Nigeria  and the execrable excesses of those charged with the security of Nigerian lives and property.

Multiple times every year, innocent and very vulnerable Nigerians lose their lives at the hands of overzealous security personnel. Whether they are shot or die from torture or poor handling in custody, it has become common to equate invitation and detention of Nigerians by  security agencies to a death sentence.

This sobering reality invites an inquiry into custodial conditions in Nigeria. While it has long been common knowledge that many detention facilities in Nigeria are unfit even to  hold  animals, the Nigerian state simply refuses to do anything about it.

Corrupt Nigerian officials prefer to loot public funds while Nigerians who fall into the hands of renegade and rogue security agencies are detained in conditions that even animals would balk at. More often than not, this results in death or lifelong psychological scarring.

Any other country would commission an independent and impartial inquiry into this heinous incident of deadly negligence by the NSCDC in Minna, and citizens, though traumatized, would await the outcome of the investigation, knowing that heads will roll. But not Nigeria, where life loses value by the day.

Shockingly, a country whose young people are brimming with tenacity and talent is  serving them graves instead of opportunities. What has not happened to young people in Nigeria? Would Nigerians forget this too after a while? Will this case, like similar cases, find a final resting place under the carpet as these young men have found in mysterious circumstances?

There is no greater measure of  a country’s values and sense of direction than the worth it attaches to human life and dignity. When there is maximum respect for human life and dignity, it reflects in everything else.

Are some Nigerian lives worth any less because they are probably uneducated or engaged in illegal mining? What happened to the constitution that preserves life and spells out the stringent conditions only under which it can be taken?

Let anyone who has been searching for that country where life is cheaper than table salt look no further; that country has been found – it is Nigeria.

While it may be a stretch to say that criminals staff Nigeria’s security agencies, it is certainly fair enough to say that many of those who work in these agencies should be   be rotting in jail were Nigeria a country that abides transparency and accountability.

While nothing can be done to bring back the dead, if Nigeria characteristically  ignores the lessons from another dark episode, it will remain locked in a macabre cycle of counting corpses.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com