If there is any synonym for the word ‘bad’, such must of necessity explicate all the qualities associated with ‘being bad’, like wickedness, cruelty etc. And if an act is to be described as ‘good’, such must equally of necessity be seen to be beneficial to either the speaker or to others. For an act therefore to be judge as ‘being bad’ means such act is an embodiment of dangerous implications. However, if anyone chooses to replace the word ‘bad’ with a synonym that have beneficial import, such persons need to book an appointment with a psychiatrist.
The above is no attempt at given a lecture in ‘Ethics’ but a brief elucidation on what it might takes to judge an act, both from consequentialist or a deontologist's perspective. Again, the analysis is essential for it aims to water the ground for the conclusion bellied in the essay: That the gruesome killing, lynching, of a teacher in Gombe State, Nigeria by her students/pupils (15 years ago) for ‘desecrating the holy book’, is bad, nay immoral and criminals! And to quickly add: that justice WAS NEVER served show how much lip service our leaders pay to human lives and education!
The teacher, Mrs. Christiana Oluwatoyin Oluseesin, was a teacher a Government Day Secondary School, Gandu in Gombe State, Nigeria before she met her untimely death. Like every other human, without premonition of their appointment with death, Mrs. Olusesin never knew that the students she laboriously study and prepare lesson notes to teach will one day lynch her. Although her case might not be the first among victims of both religious intolerance and jungle justice, hers is a special case because of the circumstance surrounding her death: an effort to curb now commonplace examination malpractices in school examinations!
As reported in The Daily Trust newspapers of 17 April, 2007: She was said to have rightly seized a set of books a student had smuggled in (into the examination hall) with the intent of cheating, during the course of writing examination on Islamic Religious Knowledge. Unknown to Mrs. Oluseesin, a copy of the Holy Quran was discreetly hidden among the confiscated books and which she angrily threw away. Soon after the end of the said examination, the affected student played the victim and cried foul. Thereafter, a mob (led by Yan Kalare boys) swooped on the hapless and unsuspecting woman, and killed her for "desecrating" the holy book.
Well, that is the pathetic scenario that culminated in the mob lynching of the moralist, a disciplinarian that so many of the notoriously religious but morally bankrupt students have begrudged without having the avenue to avenge her ‘disturbances’ before the examination hall incident. The story is no doubt nauseating. No sane human with full capacity to judge or evaluate an act will judge that as good. For that will be an attempt at wishing for such painful mob death. The most disturbing of the aftermath of the event however is that her assassins, the juvenile murderers and their adult accomplices, are still walking freely on the streets of Gandu. It is more annoying to know that the Nigerian Police had, as usual, relaxed investigation into the religiously coloured murder and declared the case COLD!
Two factors have, however, been identified as the likely cause of the dutiful teacher’s death: Religion and Ethnicity. These two factors have solidly remained a disunifying factor among Nigerians. The northerners, most especially the Hausa-Fulanis, have been been accused of using these two factors interchangeably, nay selfishly, to rid southerners domicile in their region. The Igbos, of the south east, and the Yorubas, of the southwest, have been crying foul for a long time over the activities of the northern ethnic jingoists and zealous religious bigots decimating their, Igbos and Yorubas, folks.
Without endless chronicling, the incidences in Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Ilorin, Sagamu and Maiduguri in the recent past are testimonies to this fact. Even if the allegations of the past are untrue, considering the fact that Mrs. Oluseesin is a Yoruba and a Christian will cast doubt over the correctness of such falsity. While condemning religion will not solve the problem, every sane religionist must likewise know that killing in the name of their ‘God’ is bad for the public perception of the true tenets of such religion, most especially the premium such religion placed on the lives of non-adherents in a supposedly secular state like Nigeria.
Islam is no doubt a religion of peace, as the Quoran and so many respected Islamic scholars opined but some Muslims act otherwise using the religion as a cover. In as much as this act, and also spree killing and wanton properties destruction, supposedly in the name of Allah, are not enough to conclude that Islam is bad, those adherents who claimed to be versed in the teachings of the prophet and the true tenets of the religion must help in curbing the excesses of their ‘fanatic’, opportunistic and criminal minded members.
As for the ethnic angle to the gruesome murder, the truly Nigerian of the Hausa-Fulani heritage must rise up to the challenge and educate others on the need for peaceful coexistence of Nigerians of diverse ethnic background. And remind this class of myopic Hausa-Fulani populace that Nigeria is one country and one people with shared destiny that must learn to live together in peace to enhance mobility of labour and equal opportunities in any part of the country which are harbingers of all round national development.
That Mrs. Oluwatoyin Oluseesin, a disciplinarian, was murdered in cold blood, leaving her husband, children and mother, is a reality that we are conditioned to accept. One can only hope that bad acts such as this will cease for it is commonsensically illogical for anyone to kill either in the name of a living, all powerful, God or a superior ethnic group. Besides, there is dire need now, more than ever before, for Nigerians to live secularly together not only for our budding civil rule but also for future Nigerians.
Photos Credit: Twitter.com
Adeyemi J Ademowo, a sociocultural analyst and development anthropologist, works with Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti
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