Editorial

The brutal killing of FUTMINNA don

IN what suggests that there is no end in sight to the desecration of human lives in the Nigerian society for the flimsiest of reasons, there has been yet another killing of a woman by violent non-state actors in Minna, Niger State. The main suspect claimed they came on a revenge mission because the woman relieved her of her duties as a domestic help because of her stealing habit. The woman, Dr Funmilola Adefolalu, a Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUTMINNA) lecturer, was found dead in her residence in the Gbaiko Area of the town on October 29. She had been gruesomely killed a day earlier in a plot reportedly masterminded by the 14-year-old domestic help. The police have confirmed the arrest of the teenage prime suspect while they are on the trail of the two other suspects connected to the crime who are on the run. In a video that has gone viral on the internet, the suspect confessed that she and classmates, “Walex and Smart,” conspired to attack the lecturer at her residence on Saturday, October 28. Apparently, the maid recruited her accomplices to carry out a revenge mission on the lecturer who had sent her packing because she was stealing from her. According to the misguided teenager, the plan was to beat up the lecturer for laying her off but Walex stabbed her, claiming she had recognised them, and so could report them to the police.

This dastardly act necessarily provokes a litany of questions. How could a 14-year-old be involved in such gruesome crime? Where did she take her influence from? The incident is hard to believe: the level of evil demonstrated is absolutely unimaginable. Who raised this girl? Though a minor, she had the awareness to commit such a crime. How did she become a maid in the first place? Did she take up the job of a domestic help in order to steal from the woman and facilitate the execution of this cruel agenda? What is the level of complicity of her accomplices who are at large in the planning and execution of this hideous killing? How well did Dr Adefolalu know this maid before hiring her? Did she hire her based on recommendation, and who recommended her? What was the real motive of the killing? Why was it necessary to kill her if the ignoble objective of the criminal was just to teach her a lesson for laying the maid off? The suspects are claiming that the they killed the woman because she had recognised them, but why did one of them go to the woman’s residence with a sharp knife? It is strange that a 14-year-old domestic help, who had yet to spend more than three weeks in her principal’s employ before being sacked on account of larceny, could orchestrate a grievous felony of this magnitude. The fleeing suspects must be apprehended in order to unravel the actual motivation for the chilling act.

The brutal killing of this female lecturer in her house allegedly on the machination, along with two others, of her teenage housemaid, has starkly brought to the fore once again, the level of moral and behavioral degeneration pervading the society. It is incredible and saddening that the society’s descent into an ethical quandary, as exemplified by the virtual flight of moral rectitude, has become so deep that a teenager did not see anything wrong with planning to kill in order to take a revenge for being sacked from her job and perhaps steal from a woman who hitherto gave her a means of livelihood! This is a terribly concerning development. What kind of society and family produced such a degenerate teenager? What kind of training could she have had about outlook on life and moral comportment? The country is today largely saddled with young people devoted to material gains even at the expense of life and worthy human relationships.

This teenager could still have kept her job if she did not steal from the lecturer. This is a huge challenge that the society and its leaders must brace up to through a moral reset. The society must be deliberate and intentional about reemphasising, through exemplary leadership, that the tendency to aspire to accomplish life goals through asocial and felonious methods is perilous, and it is neither in the overall interest of the society nor the aspirants’. Not a few believe, and perhaps rightly so, that the mass killings by herdsmen, insurgents, bandits and other dangerous criminals, which are now commonplace, are responsible for the considerably diminished respect for the sanctity of human life in the Nigerian society. News of deaths or killing of human beings that used to be received with fear, sorrow, trepidation and sobriety in the past have now been reduced to mere revelation of statistics, such that everyone, except the families of the affected, moves on shortly after each announcement. Life has become cheap, no longer seen as sacred.

To rein in this pernicious tendency, the society has to show that what it will acknowledge is dignified values and good moral behaviour, not the acquisition of material wealth through disreputable means. There is an urgent need for the reintroduction of a moral compass for behaviour across the society, with leaders at all levels showing the way. The idea of acts devoid of moral essence becoming the norm will only lead the society into a state of anomie: not even those ostensibly high up in the society will be able to shield themselves from the negative effects of such a development. Put more pointedly, it is in the interest of all for the society to institute a new narrative of moral and dignified living. We are greatly saddened by the heartless killing of a harmless university don and we urge the relevant authorities to painstakingly inquire into the ghoulish incident and ensure maximum punishment for the perpetrators.

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