Hot SourceInstead of milk and honey, Nigeria is rather a country flowing with blood with numerous avoidable and unavoidable deaths, easily making Africa’s largest democracy one of the most dangerous countries on earth.
Within the slaughter slab that the Nigerian space has become, every Nigeria has been spattered by blood to some degree in a country where everyday interactions have been turned to bloodbaths.
On March 27, 2025, 16 hunters of Northern extraction travelling from Port Harcourt to Kano for Sallah ran into killers stationed at Uromi, Edo State. All it took was a false alarm branding the travellers bandits for the killers to mobilize their bloodlust, bayonets, and butchery skills and fires. All 16 hunters were killed and fed to the fire. The killings have since provoked a national outcry.
There is a sense in which smoldering anger in many Nigerians has congealed into murderous rage. Many Nigerians driven to despair by the insecurity ravaging the country, disillusioned with the system which fails to stem the tide and desperate for some action are too easily carried away by the promise of jungle justice. All they often need to ignite their killer rage are killer cries.
All over Nigeria, there is a mounting sense of frustration that the criminal justice system always crumbles under pressure, with criminals often getting what amounts to no more than a slap on the wrist.
Even worse is the fact that many Nigerians believe rather justifiably that the Nigerian criminal justice system is selective, favouring the powerful and punishing the poor.
So, for many Nigerians, whenever the opportunity arises to execute swift justice, they take it with both hands. To fix this murderous mentality of mob justice, which typically catches innocent people cold, Nigeria must reform its justice system to preclude jungle justice.
With Nigeria’s criminal justice system struggling so badly, many criminals are on the loose seeking the next spot for their criminal adventures. In Uromi, they laid low under the guise of vigilantes until unsuspecting hunters walked into their trap.
In a country that has become criminally and critically unsafe, who are bandits? If the hunters were truly bandits, would they not have been more careful to conceal their identity and weapons?
If not that buffoonery blended perfectly with bloodlust on that eternally dark day in Uromi, wouldn’t some of the killers have cautioned themselves that bandits don’t usually move around during the day or bare the tools of their trade, if they are not licensed?
A nationwide condemnation has followed the killing, but the difference that must be made this time around is that condemnation must yield concrete action, which is the prosecution and incarceration of the perpetrators.
All those who partook in the gruesome killings of the innocent hunters are heartless criminals who have no place in any sane society. They must be transparently tried and punished in accordance with the law.
Unfortunately, some Nigerians have invoked memories of lynching in other parts of the country to play ethnic and religious cards, but a killing is a killing and no human life is inferior to the other.
Nigerians must refuse to become that country where the gruesome killing of citizens is not only left unpunished but justified under any guise.
Kene Obiezu,
