WITH UCHE NNADOZIE
This has become a social problem, I wonder what sociologists and such disciplines are going to do about it. Even the government and traditional institutions are not left out. We just cannot afford to treat this with indifference. Nigerians don’t just die; it must be the responsibility of someone else. And it must be through some diabolical means. The worst part is that a lot of enmities have been created. From generation to generation folks pass these tales to the younger generation of how their uncle was killed by a certain cousin or how their father was killed by their mother.
These enmities live in our hearts and we make of it what we want. Sometimes, we begin to keep malice, even plot how to waste someone of the other family or friend as a result. A lot of the time these days’ churches are the worst culprits. In these modern โspiritual-filledโ churches, everything that happens must have been caused by someone or some deity in the village. Young people begin to hate their village and refuse to go there. Some churches go overboard and lay the blame of a bad omen or death on non living objects like walls, paintings, sculptures and carvings. Pastors tell their members (victims) to evacuate such inanimate objects from their homes and offices. They tell them that those objects are home to all the evils of this world that have gathered to deal with this member.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there are no evil family members or friends. There should be. However the rate at which we blame every occurrence in our lives on people around us is alarming. As we point fingers towards a direction, the other people point towards us in their time of grief too. It becomes a vicious circle. This, my friends make life meaningless. As for religious personages that deepen these fault lines, you will imagine that they should be part of the solutions. But no! Their clairvoyant and healing powers don’t have the antidote to family issues. Instead they have the power to exacerbate it.
So upon say the violent death of a loved one, family and friends point south, if police point north. A dead husband must have been killed by the wife. They even ask the wife to drink the water used to wash the corpse. Disgusting!ย If a family member has suffered kidney or cancer problems for 20 years and dies, somehow family members will blame one of the dead person’s friends or family as the “killer”.ย If you are a pastor or imam and suddenly dies even if you took ill, it must be the handiwork of a rival pastor or church/mosque elders who argued with you yesterday. It just must be something else. Nigerians can’t just die for death sake. Somebody must have killed a Nigerian. It must be the opposite of what is possible.
The worst is the politician or big man. Any politician that dies now must be because he was killed by his opponent. There’s nothing that will convince the family or supporters otherwise. Until the police point to the “opposition”, the murder will never be “resolved”. Never mind that before the man died he cried and held his chest or has suffered high blood pressure and diabetes for 30 years. Police should forget it, if they like let them bring in Scotland Yard and parade Ibrahim Shekau as the killer of Alex Badeh, the family, friends and “opposition” will never agree except you create suspects that look like Buhari or Osinbajo or Buhari’s wife or his Chief of staff.ย Police should not bother. It is what it is. We have been like this long before police was formed by the colonialists.
Armed robbers can’t kill a big man in Nigeria. It must be a hired hand linked to government, family member, business partner or opposition. In Nigeria, armed robbers kill poor people only. If the dead is poor and the incident occurred during a robbery, it is ok. Everyone will believe the story and the family will mourn in peace. Accidents can’t kill a big man in Nigeria, it must have been contrived or remote-controlled via dark forces of imagined opponents. In fact, when you flip the coin and find that the victim is some sort of big man, all manner of conspiracy theories will be woven around the death. From the incredulous to the stupid, they keep weaving it. There must be at least ten such conspiracies. At times funeral will be shifted to ascertain not the cause of death, but the killer. Even when the killer has been arrested, family members will reject the suspect and make enemies of the police investigators.
Already Alex Badeh’s family has rejected the police arrest. They claim that the shooting was clinical as such must have been carried out by a โmarksmanโ. This is possible, the same way the police arrests are possible. In matters like this, if you are in doubt inaugurate a discreet private investigator. Let’s see months and years down the line whether the two outcomes will tally or not. On the face value, it is not enough to reject an investigation; it will be fine to give clues too. What do you think happened? Who do you think did it? Like I have argued, it will be difficult to change this perception of someone else being responsible for deaths in Nigeria. It has permeated our being so much so that blaming someone or something has become a default response to any death.
