The holistic version of the prayer-line above is; May the innocent not suffer and the guilty not go unpunished. It is often offered, when a felon must be identified and facts are deliberately muddled, in situations, needing objectivity.
Since the Lekki “massacre” (I use that term with caution) report came with the whirlwind of tirade-trading, I have been applying the wisdom of Pontius Pilate, in freeing myself from the consequences of my reportorial involvement, because blood was undeniably shed, (by who is the muddled riddle), and God is certain about avenging blood, shed in arrogance of ‘you-no-fit-do-anything.’
God began avenging blood shed Lekki-esque, from the cradle of humanity. He sampled Cain, the first-born of human race, to prove the premium on blood.
Despite God’s warning to Cain in Genesis 4:7, he spurned the correction rod and became the progenitor of murderers and wanderers in living history.
It would appear he got to slay Abel without any form of resistance. That must have been out of Abel’s conviction that blood would always be thicker than water and a Big Brother, would rather watch over him, than slay him. But God is clear about the heart of man in Jeremiah 17:9; deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. The Almighty then, went rhetorical in the last line, “who can know it”? Only Him, the Omniscient, the All-knowing, knows it.
Aftermath the shooting of 20/10, dead bodies were recovered, from Lekki Toll Gate. That is a fact. Even Lagos State CEO, Mr. Babajide Sanwoolu, who roused the trained-to-kill from their sequestered abode, on his citizens, who were just catching “we-no-go-gree” cruise, attested to, at least, two bodies.
General A.I Taiwo, Commander, 81 Military Intelligence Brigade, Nigerian Army in Victoria Island, told the panel that his men responded with live and blank bullets when protesters hurled stones at them. That must have been some kind of David’s Goliath-slaying stones, for his men, to respond lethally.
Altogether 99 bodies were recovered from and around the crime scene, the cause of death, was mostly by blunt force trauma, to the head! Also a fact.
That means they were bludgeoned! That was borrowing Cain’s murder-plan.
Whoever did that, pre-meditated the mass murder. When those unarmed victims fled the shooting by the soldiers and policemen, some people clearly went after them in their terror-flight and slew them, noiselessly, the way Cain took out Abel! What a textbook case of man’s barbarity, to man.
In his 1784 classic, “Man was made to mourn: A dirge”, Poet Robert Burns wrote, “Many and sharp the num’rous ills, Inwoven with our frame…Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands mourn!
Doubtlessly, some people went to the protest ground, to make the nation mourn, or more like, the corner of it, still left with respect for sanctity of blood. In lands, where blood spill is now more than oil spill, though the latter, is expected to be a regular occurrence since oil is drilled every time, Lekki 99 would be mere additional body-count to the tasteless Arithmetic of daily fatality from pure criminality and hate siege, gripping most places in Northern Nigeria. That possibly emboldens state actors, especially at the federal level, doing everything to make the Lekki killings, look and sound, commonplace. Maybe to them, it is a case of “kilo ju o ri ri” (what is the big deal about it). But even the blood being shed with frightening regularity in the North and other places would be accounted for with God, because every life matters to the Creator and that is even if Nigeria has not started accounting for it.
In Deuteronomy 19:10, God said, “that innocent blood be not shed in thy land…and so blood be upon thee.” People died in Lekki and Sanwoolu wanted the truth. Well, the truth is here, if the governor and his team, desperate in their bid to disparage the findings, would be able to handle it.
The fact is, practically all the dead, had their skulls broken. By who? With what? Buttstock of guns, to avoid bullet holes that would generate global outrage? Whoever devised that Cain murder-style, must be a demented soul, who went to the protest ground, purposely to kill, borrowing the Badoo boys’ style when they held Ikorodu in an embrace of death, years back.
If soldiers were the reincarnated Badoo boys, smashing the heads of innocent Nigerians under the cover of darkness, their motives would be clear. The mentality is always never to appear weak to bloody civilians. Even at home and immediate community, an average uniformed fellow wants to be feared. Their psyche needs a reset. They need civilians’ respect more than fright.
In the spirit of doubt benefit, what if the smashing, was done by thugs, hired by whoever, possibly the state, which earlier unleashed them on the unarmed jollying protesters. Then, they must have been lying-in-wait for the protesters to be dispersed, with an understanding with the military, through some facilitators! That would still mean extra-judicial killings, by the state!
Or did some compromised protesters turn on their fleeing compatriots? Maybe, because in every 12, there must be a Judas. But for a gathering that bonded to the point of becoming a love-grotto and hunting ground for babes and macho guys, even natural cannibals would have melted in overarching love, (both agape and sensual) that foregrounded the protest arena.
Could it be Yahoo boys, since they are regularly linked with human sacrifices? Well, this time, only they would have no motive to seek the blood of those, earlier accused of working their interest, by tackling SARS, the bad guys’ nemesis. At a point, the Yahoo boys were even accused of funneling support-fund to the organised wallet of the known leaders of the protest. So, who did?
This is a classical situation Yoruba will capture with “agbon nse, ikamudu nse, be oju oloko, lo ri kudu kudu yi (the farmer’s visage is hideously-contoured from being stung, yet both bees and wasps are denying responsibility). I have substantially read the contentious portions of the report and discovered a huge gap left yawning by the panel, considering the open-ended latitude reportedly gifted them, by the governor, whose appearance before the panel, should have also been compelled, just like Obasanjo, before Oputa Panel.
(To be continued).
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and then