The killing of Citizen Jumoke during Yoruba nation rally

A lady simply identified as Jumoke was killed during the police raid on Yoruba nation canvassers in Lagos recently. The victim was  felled by a stray bullet allegedly fired by the police while trying to disrupt the peaceful rally. It is noteworthy that similar rallies had been held in other capitals of the states in the South-West without any untoward incident. However, what would appear to be a foretaste of the Lagos deadly incident was the invasion in the wee hours of the morning,  two days earlier, of the home of the most visible proponent of an independent Yoruba nation, Mr. Sunday Adeyemo, otherwise known as Sunday Igboho, by security agents led by members of the the State Security Service (SSS). The attack left in its trail blood, tears and the death of some of Igboho’s aides. It is yet unclear why the Lagos State Police Command chose to break up the peaceful  protest when the organisers had no history of violence or lawlessness in towns and cities where rallies were held earlier.

The force had initially claimed that its intervention was not attended by any fatality. But when confronted with incontrovertible evidence, it put up a casual and feeble defence to exculpate itself of culpability and in the process, it ended up painting a picture of an institution that has totally lost its conscience and respect for the sanctity of human life. The police behaviour and utterances were  totally bereft of pathos. And if there is no compassion as the police statement after the incident  clearly depicts, then there is a regrettable vitiation of the  essence of civilised  human and social relations. Also, by implication, it shows that the government does not value the lives of citizens, and if a nation does not place premium on the lives of its own citizens, it cannot possibly expect other nations to treat them well. It is no wonder, then, that many bearers of the green passport are often treated with contempt and disdain across the globe.

By its cold and disaffected reaction after the deadly incident, the force inadvertently put itself in an awkward position in the eye of dispassionate observers and it must answer a few questions. Why did it claim there was no killing at the rally without prior investigation? And when it became clear that someone was killed, why did the police rush into an outright dismissal of its culpability before launching an inquiry into the incident? If the police did not kill the young lady, why were they not desirous of finding out who did? How come the police did not even talk about investigating the incident, which should have come first? Why did the police threaten to shoot the mother of the victim when she asked for the remains of her daughter? How can you intimidate and threaten to shoot a bereaved person?

The display of callousness, unwarranted resort to intimidation of the mother of the deceased and outright dismissal of any suggestion of culpability prior to investigation suggest that the police most probably have something to hide. And in the unlikely event that the victim was not killed by the police bullet, it was obvious that the latter did not seem bothered about her gruesome death.  It was ordinarily expected that even if the police did not empathise with the parents of the young lady, they should at least have shown remorse for losing  one out of the many lives they swore to protect in patently avoidable circumstances. Perhaps, it bears stressing that the reality on the ground is that  there was no record of death in all the places where the Yoruba nation rallies had taken place until the incident in Lagos with the involvement of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

The implication is that it is difficult to divorce the record of the death of the young lady from the involvement of the police in the rally. And that is ironic and most  unfortunate because the police are supposed to be the guarantor of peace, but they have now turned into the harbinger of death in many of their interventions across the country. Nigeria is a democracy, not a dictatorship, and in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious society,  occasional divergence of views and dissent amongst the citizenry and between them and the government are not unusual. And the peaceful ventilation of such disapproval of  government policies is within the rights of every citizen as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land. Therefore, state-orchestrated violent  disruption of  a peaceful assembly in order to limit the civic space and suppress dissent  is not just morally reprehensible, it is a breach of the law.

The good thing is that citizens who know their rights and have the conviction of the cause they are pursuing  are unlikely to be deterred by official antics and lawlessness, especially in the face of deepening injustice and recurrent defiance of the law by the state. The  NPF therefore requires rigorous retraining in the art of managing people under democratic tenets, including the right to hold peaceful rallies. This would be essential to stemming the recurring attachment of the police to preventable loss of life at every point in the country.

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