Nigeria: Anti-corruption obsession reveals our Mob Social Pathology.

A group of irate men. Machete. Fire. Dead bodies. Supposed chieftaincy and land tussle in a tiny Cross River community, Southern—Nigeria. 

If we've debunked false-dichotomy of Muslim-North and Christian-South, we’d agree that in all communities across Nigeria’s entire 910,770 sq. km landmass, corrupt practices are intolerable. And we punish them.

This social desire to purge actions we find immoral, political-speak ‘corrupt,’ weighed heavy on my young mind. From mom’s, relatives’ and teachers’ firm whips when I deviate from expected path. To fear of the mob, after seeing a lady stripped naked at Ikeja for revealing too much flesh; again, shouts of ‘Barawo! Barawo!’ at Agege as crowd encircles a zombified burning man; then, a pleading driver being lynched at Apongbon for hitting a passerby. 

I quickly learnt to behave myself when out and about in my birth state, Lagos. You’re one neurotic scream [help he’s stolen my breast!] away from ‘justice’ descending upon you, heavily. Alert stares of strangers on public transport and on street sides, made me walk straight-backed. A society where each one’s capacity for violence keeps the other in check, it’d seem.

Atop heap of immoralities every Nigerian community wants rid, is that ‘Big Man’ whose source of riches is suspect. A seeming member of the conspiratorial elite, the mob can’t accost him or her for explanation, and to dispense justice.

I was aged 16 when, on a September evening, I saw a black Toyota Hilux of gun-toting Mobile Policemen, called MOPO in Lagos, halt in front of a huge house we referred to as ‘White House’ in our neighbourhood.

News began to filter that, contrary to what many onlookers thought, the MOPO weren’t there to, at last, arrest owner of this humungous white house that was erected within a year, but to protect him. His hotel and plush cars, like of many a Owerri ‘Big Man’ had been burnt by youths in the Otokoto Riots that had been going on for some days. That this high-gated house of his in Lagos wouldn't meet same fate, when we, his neighbours, hear that he’s suspected of ‘money ritual,’ he sought police protection.

It’s silly looking back now, but for unreasoning, I was immediately riled that the Law was safeguarding a criminal who ‘conjured money,’ rather than arrest him. I wanted justice – him punished.

This is the social imagination that every Nigerian president, since 1966, feeds redmeat to, when assuring us they’ll end or kill corruption and we become filled with adulation for the anti-corruption tzar. Even though in some cases this person has blood of the ousted leader on their hands: a mob social pathology.

On Judges

With such public attitude, it’s unsurprising that the legal profession is looked upon with disdain in Nigeria.

Sardauna Ahmadu Bello records in memoir, the challenge to get his subjects in Northern—Nigeria, already accustomed to immediate Shari’a (corrupted to Seriya in Yoruba) punishment for social depravation, to tolerate British Law, that often left offenders ‘walking about as large as life and as free as air,’ because ‘...steps prescribed by [British] law may not have been carried out.’ Bello himself sounded unimpressed.

The Nigerian public, today, yet gets startled when Blackstone ratio, for insufficient evidence, or ‘technicalities’ bungles what in the media had looked like a ‘Big Man’ finally being served justice. 

‘All lawyers are liars’ is national consensus, although we know when Rousseau said: ‘man is born free, and everywhere he’s in chains,’ he probably had the Nigerian judiciary in mind.

Whether at Federal or State level, this arm of government is held in leash like a dog by its two sister arms: executive and legislature, who withhold judiciary funding and arrogate to themselves powers to promote and dismiss Judges or recommend for retirement.

So, when the executive went calling for the judiciary, breaking down walls of Judges’ homes, the on-looking public cheered. Anyone uneasy with this state of affairs is reminded of extant mission to ‘kill corruption.’ For the mob, the end justifies the means; assured by an executive which says they’d ‘been monitoring expensive and luxurious lifestyles’ of the Judges.

On Shi’ites

The Kaduna State Government, a week to the Day of Ashura, declared minority Shi’ite Islamic sect in the State, Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), ‘an unlawful society.’ 

IMN processions, it said henceforth against ‘...public safety ...public morality.’

Members of the sect, a multitude donned in their black attire, dared to go on procession on the Day of Ashura, what was to them ‘Mourning of Muharram.’ And, of course, a chance to, simultaneously, register their displeasure at continued detention of their leader by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

It was nauseating to see youths of Kaduna, in full glare of law enforcement agents that had earlier kettled the sect, have a Shi’ite fest – properties belonging to the IMN reduced to rubbles, and some members, men, women and children, savagely killed. Quickly spreading to other Northern—Nigeria States.

Again demonstrating that mob desire in Nigeria to punish ‘depravation’ in our communities, encroaching on fundamental human rights of others, even though we can’t explain how they’ve violated our own rights, making them criminals, like our anti-gay law. 

Our mob social pathology must first be tempered if we’re ever to put into civilised practice our claim to be corruption intolerant.