Ejiofor Alike argues that the recent mob violence in Uromi, Edo State, where travellers were subjected to jungle justice on mere suspicion of being kidnappers, could have been avoided if security agencies had been fair and firm in bringing perpetrators of violence across the country to justice

Tension ran high across the country last week after a mob in Udune Efandion, Uromi, Esan North East LGA of Edo State, burned 16 travellers alive.

According to the official account of the incident by the Edo State Police Command’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Moses Yamu, a truck transporting 25 travellers from Elele, Rivers State, was intercepted by a vigilante group in Uromi.

“During the stop, some travellers were found with locally made Dane guns, which raised suspicion among the vigilante members,” Yamu explained.

He said when some vigilante members raised the alarm, enraged community members and passers-by attacked and lynched 16 of the occupants and also set the truck conveying them on fire.

Yamu further explained that the police operatives from the Uromi Division rescued 10 of the travellers, two of whom sustained injuries.

No law in Nigeria justifies such jungle justice even if the suspects were confirmed kidnappers. The killing of the travellers was as callous and despicable as the method used to terminate their lives.

The action of the mob was reminiscent of the atrocities of the violent herdsmen who invaded communities across the country and burned houses together with their occupants without any response from security agencies.

Lucky survivors end up in the camps of internally displaced persons (IDPs), built for survivors of herdsmen’s attacks and other victims of terrorism.

As tension enveloped the country for fears of possible reprisals, there were torrents of reactions to the incident.

While the Northern States Governors’ Forum (NSGF) under the chairmanship of Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State had rightly noted that extrajudicial violence was unacceptable, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar had demanded that justice must be done to restore public confidence in the country’s security institutions.

Similarly, the Northern Senators’ Forum, through their chairman, Senator Abdul’aziz Yari, lamented the fate of the victims, who the lawmakers said “were tragically stereotyped as Fulani kidnappers and brutally murdered in a despicable manner,” describing the incident as “deeply disturbing and saddening.”

On its part, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary Prof. Tukur A. Muhammad-Baba, argued that the “tragic incident at Uromi, Edo State, cannot be isolated from the pattern of ethnic profiling and vigilante meted out to northerners as they seek to eke out livelihoods in southern Nigeria.”

The presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) in the 2023 general election, Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso; the House of Representatives; the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Sani Musa (APC Niger), and the Senator representing Sokoto South, Aminu Tambuwal, also called for justice.

The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) was more daring in its reaction as it issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Edo State and federal governments to prosecute those responsible, according to a statement issued by its spokesman, Abubakar Jiddere.

There is a consensus among right-thinking Nigerians that a mere suspicion that the travellers were kidnappers was not a sufficient reason to kill them in such a gruesome manner.

While President Bola Tinubu has since ordered a manhunt for their killers, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa, had promised that the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN) would work closely with the relevant security agencies to fish out the killers.

However, there is deep ethnic mistrust and suspicions about their identities.

The victims were said to have pleaded that they were hunters, but the vigilante group that intercepted them insisted that they were kidnappers.

Given the atrocities being committed in the community and other communities in the southern parts of the country and the Middle Belt by armed herdsmen and kidnappers, the people were obviously inflamed by the sight of guns found in their possession.

But instead of handing them over to the police for a thorough investigation, the mob took the laws into their hands. 

Many have argued that the lack of commitment by the government and security agencies to bring the criminal herdsmen to justice may have also fuelled the callousness and lawlessness exhibited by the mob.

Had the government and the security agencies been arresting violent herdsmen for their heinous crimes and bringing them to justice without fear and favour, the Uromi incident would probably have not occurred as the people would have had confidence in the ability of the security agencies to handle the case appropriately.

The government, particularly the Edo State government should be partly blamed for not doing enough to bring to book the violent herdsmen, whose activities in Uromi inflamed the people to take the laws into their hands.

When people are abandoned to their fate, they lose confidence in government institutions and resort to extrajudicial violence in search of justice.

It is believed that if all Nigerians who reacted to the killing in Uromi had issued similar statements on the killing of 20 farmers by herdsmen across four communities of Aba Pastor, Aba Sunday, Ademekun Camp, and Aba Alajido Camps within Ala Elefosan, in Akure North LGA of Ondo State last month, the herders would not have been emboldened to kill five more farmers at Aba Oyinbo community in the same LGA, 48 hours later.

The killings had forced the angry residents of Akure to organise demonstrations at the office of Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa on two occasions within one week.

On April 1, a massive protest by angry youths over sustained attacks by herdsmen erupted in Otukpo, the headquarters of the ancient Idoma people, who occupy seven LGAs of Benue South.

Agatu, Ado, Okpokwu, Otukpo and Ogbadibo LGAs, all in Benue South, have been under sustained herdsmen attacks without statements of condemnation by Nigerian leaders.

While apologising to northerners for the evil perpetrated against the travellers, the Esan Descendants Assembly (EDA) Worldwide, the umbrella of all Esan people, captured the correct mood of communities that are under siege by herdsmen across the country.

“When a people are pushed to the edge — when mothers can no longer sleep in peace and fathers hide their children — something inside begins to die,” the group said.

The group, which acknowledged that “madness must not become our way,” rightly noted that “what we saw on that dark day in Uromi was not justice; it was the bitter fruit of neglect, the madness that comes when a people are left to fend for themselves.”

The police and military may have become over stretched due to nationwide insecurity, while some of their officers are allegedly complicit in many kidnap cases.

Unfortunately, most southern governors who should also tackle insecurity have abdicated their responsibility and abandoned communities for foreign and local herders to kill, kidnap, rape, occupy and destroy.

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