Pulse Opinion: Lynch mob in Nigeria must unlearn cruelty

After a preliminary investigation, the state police command confirmed that the deceased was falsely accused of trying to abduct school children in the town of Umuoji. This was reportedly confirmed in a statement by its spokesperson SP Haruna Mohammed, on Friday, February 8, 2019.

The local media in Nigeria are familiar with many instances where persons suspected of committing a crime are killed by a lynch mob. The mob are mostly persons who cannot deal with their emotions and show faith in the law. In 2018, some of the victims of mob justice include individuals suspected of being a homosexual, an act that is also frowned against by the law.

Child abduction is also a menace that gets the mob worked up. They develop an uncontrollable anger that often ends with setting the suspect ablaze. That almost happened to Paschal Onyilo before a police response team appeared at the scene where he was being tortured.

According to a police statement, Onyilo was en route to a neighbouring town Obosi to install a public address system but got interrupted by a school pupil who destroyed the windscreen of his Toyota Camry vehicle with a brick.

While trying to scold the child, a mob mistakes him for a kidnapper. The police was able to intervene before the mob could set fire on car. Paschal Onyilo was reportedly sitting inside when they tried to do this.

"He came down to arrest the boy with intent to take him to the nearest Police Station but a false kidnap alarm was raised by the people in the Area who mobbed him without giving him a chance to exculpate himself," SP Haruna Mohammed reportedly says in a statement published by the Linda Ikeji's Blog (LIB).

The police is already taking an action to prosecute those who took part in the cannibalistic act. It promised to bring them to book but how can it prevent more?

Vibrant civic education is needed

It should actively linger in the minds of Nigerians their responsibility to one another.

Giving them more knowledge about their civic responsibilities can help them to learn a culture of peace and their duty to the society.

Their inability to show restraint and make the right call when a person has been suspected of a crime is an indicator of their lack of education which is not necessarily formal. A functioning government should have structures in place to cater to this need.

The fear of getting lynched for trying to help a child to cross safely from a busy street is a new security concern because of the mentality of a misinformed mob. Nigeria, with an adult literacy rate of 59.6% needs to gets its local government (being closer to the grassroots) to influence it and ensure order in the society.

It can do this by being deliberate. In partnership with the National Orientation Agency, it must actively develop structures that can help reform the people until every one knows better.

A nation that is intentional about its growth must first invest in its people.