In their customary way of sweeping serious and complex problems
in Nigeria under the carpet, the federal
government and security agencies are unlikely to pursue any further the case of
the Igbo boy who was nearly killed by Hausa youths in the Ketu area of Lagos
State last Sunday for allegedly blaspheming Islam. Yet, the incident indicates
greater problems ahead, especially in this season of lynching in parts of the
North over allegations of blasphemy, and mounting distrust between Christians
and Muslims. The Ketu, Lagos case is truly worrisome and emblematic, and it shows
how delicately Nigeria perches on the edge of a major national conflict. The
Igbo boy, Emmanuel Emeka, who is a chemist, was alleged to have written a
blasphemous word on a magazine which some Hausa youths in the area interpreted
to be blasphemous. Thereupon they attempted to mob him and burn his shop but
for the timely intervention of the police who rescued him and put him in
protective custody.
According to the Police Public Relations Officer, Dolapo Badmos,
a superintendent of police, the fracas had since been brought under control. In
her words: “The Lagos State Police Command averted what could have been a
religious crisis between the Igbo community and the Hausa Muslim community due
to the timely intervention of policemen. At about 9.05pm, the Ketu division
received a distress call that a boy was about to be lynched by some youths
because he wrote blasphemous words on their magazine. The boy was rescued and
kept in protective custody. His chemist shop was secured from destruction.
Everywhere is calm as the police have intensified patrol in the area after
successfully calming frayed nerves.”
Coming
not too long after an Igbo man, Joe Chinakwe, was arrested in Sango-Ota, Ogun
State, in late August for naming his dog Buhari, supposedly after President
Muhammadu Buhari, and the lynching of eight people in Zamfara State over
another blasphemous allegation made by a student of the Abdu Gusau Polytechnic,
the Ketu, Lagos case is bound to give ample cause for worry. In the Ogun State
case, which the police asserted had nothing to do with the president or his
name, Mr Chinakwe was actually attacked by his accusers before he was rescued
by the police. His accusers were his neighbours, one of whom, Alhaji Buhari,
the dog was apparently named after. None of those who attacked Mr Chinakwe was,
however, arrested for taking the law into their hands.
In the
Zamfara case, it was simply the allegation made by a disputatious student that
prompted the violence. The brunt of the mob violence was, however, borne by a
family that attempted to come to the student’s rescue. Though there were
initial reports that the murdered eight were Christians, the authorities have
since confirmed they were not. But the state government neither denied that the
incident happened over alleged blasphemy nor indicated that the attackers had
been arrested. The police were still investigating, they said. A few months
ago, a Christian woman, Bridget Agbaheme, was also mobbed and murdered in Kano
over allegations of blasphemy. Some of her attackers have been arrested, but
the scar of the violence, and the fact that it was directed against a Christian
from the South, will remain for some time, accumulating with other such cases
of unavenged victims of blasphemy allegations.
The list
of victims of the so-called blasphemy attacks is long, dismal and growing. If
that unsavoury pattern of violence is not curbed, no one can predict when it
would lead to a conflagration. This is why the government must take the matter
more seriously than it has by implementing proactive measures. The danger
inherent in the Ketu, Lagos case is the worrisome realisation that blasphemy
violence, which had been limited to mostly the northern parts of the country,
may be steadily migrating to the southern parts. This portends very grave
danger to everyone. If southerners are somewhat timid in reacting to violent
attacks triggered by blasphemy allegations in the northern part of the country,
in all probability, they may be less squeamish in reacting to similar forms of
provocation in the southern parts of the country. The police were fortuitously
present in the Lagos case; they may not be immediately present when the
next outbreak occurs. They sensibly took the chemist into protective custody;
but the public may feel disgruntled that the police were not correspondingly
efficient in arresting the attackers.
Those
who make serial allegations of blasphemy often point to their victims religious
insensitivity. It does not occur to them that they are also guilty of cultural
insensitivity. Insensitivity to both cultural and religious feelings is to be
deplored. But much worse is self-help which poor law enforcement and
government’s lack of proactivity have engendered and encouraged over the years
until mobocracy has become a societal leitmotif.
If the
government is sensitive and honest enough, it must by now be alarmed by
worrisome pointers to a number of factors capable of destabilising the
republic. First is that bitterness and frustration in the South over the
blasphemy matter have grown and hardened in proportion to the increasing
intolerance and heedlessness in the North, a situation not helped by episodic
outbreaks of Maitatsine religious disturbances, Boko Haram insurgency that targeted
more Christians than Muslims in its early years, and state and local
governments which have deployed local regulations and town planning laws as
emblems of hostility to Southerners, especially Christians. Indeed, in the Ogun
and Lagos incidents, opinions and combatants were sharply and neatly divided
between South and North and between Christians and Muslims. Second, and more
dangerously too, considering the ethnic identity of the Ogun and Lagos victims,
the patience of the Igbo may already be wearing fragilely thin. This is why the
government’s and law enforcement agencies’ even-handedness and firmness are
indispensable to restoring normality and confidence in state impartiality.
If the
government chooses to be impartial, the law is happily on their side. The mobs
running riot on the excuse of blasphemy, sometimes spuriously, have neither the
penal code of the North nor the criminal code of the South to lean on. In
short, there is no legal provision for even the police to act on except
charging the victims of blasphemy merchants and their attackers with public
disorder and breach of peace. Years of indulging supremacist dispositions have
fostered a culture of self-help. A stop must be put to the nonsense urgently.
While citizens must be prevailed upon to respect one another’s differences,
whenever there is a breach, as indeed there will always be, there are
acceptable, legal ways of mediating the conflicts. Disagreements and religious
and cultural affronts should not always lead to violence if the society is not
to break down completely, as seems likely, given the rising climate of
intolerance in the land. But this apocalyptic outcome is not inevitable.
If the
police want, they can charge Messrs Chinakwe and Emeka with conducts likely to
cause a breach of the peace; but they must also charge their attackers under
other relevant provisions of the law. They must, however, never give the
impression the police are succumbing to a blasphemy law that does not exist. If
common sense will not compel Nigerians to live in peace with one another, then
the law must step in firmly to perform that obligation. Years of indulgence and
leniency to those who capriciously take lives in a pluralistic society must
stop. Their violence does nothing but inspire more violence and bigotry.
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