MUBI\ALUU KILLING.. Ruling Elites to Blame

MUBI\ALUU KILLING.. Ruling Elites to Blame

 by Aj. Dagga Tolar

 

 

Nigerians woke up on the 6 October up to the news of another horror killings in Aluu, Port Harcourt of River state condemning jungle justice approach that was melted out to four students,  Ugonna Obuzor 18 years old; Lloyd Toku, 19, Tekena Elkhanah, 20, and Chiadika Odinga. These killings taking place when the country was still in a state of shock and yet to come to grip with the killing of 46 students of the Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Adamawa in a no less horrifying manner as seen nearly all shade of opinion molders and makers calling for the perpetuators to be brought to book and the maximum punishment of death be brought than heavy on them, even know campaigners against capital punishment have no less been horrified in singing the same song.

For the Mubi killings, the spokeperson of the Boko Haram has been quoted to stating that they have had no hands in the killing and latest revelation pointing accusing fingers to the rivalry among various groups on campus over the recent held student union elections. That things have degenerated to such a situation on campuses in the country is not unconnected to the state of teaching facilities and the continuous underfunding that university education have had to suffer all these past years, a fall out of the neo liberal policy thrust of the ruling elites, making learning one of the most harrowing and the least activity of interest in our educational institutions for students, given the greater battle for survival and paying the outrageous fees.

We must also not forget that ruling elites as well as school authorities have in the past used rival student groups and indeed cult groups in some cases like with William Obong in UNIBEN and OAU 5 in Ife to hack down known student activists’ who were identified as leading a mass resistance against the introduction of fees on their campus. That this pattern is now been enacted is also not unconnected to the long years of government and school management wield the student union government under its influence, rid it of its independence from left incline activist students, in some cases banning the student union and left ideological and intellectual incline organizations from functioning on campus.

This the very background that has laid the roots for the worsen conditions of things on our campuses, inspite of the spirited attempt by ASUU to draw attention to all of this in series of strikes and strikes, the ruling elites time and time after every strike betray the very agreement it signed to improving conditions of learning on campus.

Added to the above is the various activities of killings and bombing by the Boko Haram in the North, which has increasingly instituted killing as a pattern to adopt in opposing whoever or whatever, instead of the more appropriate mass mobilization and involvement in a struggle to win or demand redress of the issue involved, the resort to means of arms is seen more as the way to turn to. Matters are further not helped by the conduct of the Joint Task Force (JTF) which adopts unwholesome methods in carrying out its activities of containing the scourge of the Boko Haram, through its discriminate arrest, and harassment of innocent youths, further driving more and more youth to adopt the Boko Haram method or to out rightly join its ranks. This explain why the speculation was high that the Boko Haram was involved in the Mubi killings given the fact that the JTF had a week earlier or there about raided Mubi and made arrest, the thinking was that both were link, and the fact that some of those arrested have been accused of being members of the sect, did not in anyway allow for this reasoning to be dismissed entirely

Which explain why the DSM has long been calling for the withdrawal of the JTF from the streets of Maiduguri and the whole of the north and its replacement with the formation of Community Defense Committee to be democratically run and managed by elected representatives of the people on a street to street basis, or community to community basis in the north with the right to bear arms as means of defense as oppose to the JTF, which in most cases comes heavily on the innocent victims.

With regards to the Aluu killings the NLC’s President, Abdulwahed Omar has been quoted to having condemned the killing describing it as “most cruel, dastardly and barbaric”, and calling for arrest to be made which is exactly what has happen with the arrest of the traditional ruler of Aluu and some other 20 other persons, how best can the cause of justice be served, without any attempt to halt the very conditions that led to the kind of killings that have taken place. If anything, the Aluu killings help confirm the fact that southerners can as well be brutal if given the opportunity in the same way that the Boko Haram killings and the Mubi killings have made glaring to all.

The fact of the Aluu killings most however not be lost, the four students had gone to retrieved a debt, and the debtor unable to pay had screamed “thief, thief!”, and before long a crowd and the vigilante group in the neigbourhood had pounced on them, paraded them round town, winning the support of more and more restive and unemployed youth and others to commence the roasting alive of the four students. And with such a crowd already held hostage by the failure of the police to effectively curb the rising crime wave in the inner communities, and the growing statistics of police ineptitude and in some cases freeing known criminals from prosecution, you cannot from that kind of circumstances understand the mentality of instant jungle justice, even when interrogation or proper investigation would free any innocently accused person. But then whole question of the failure of death sentence to curb crime in any of its form …without a conscious attempt to combat all of the socio economic factors like unemployment, poverty etc is lost on any such crowd already worked and all ready to take action against the caught victims.

But may we ask more and more communities are turning to form vigilante groups to protect themselves from the social menace of robberies in the communities. First is the complete inability and ill equip nature of the police to handle the viral spread series of social menace emanating from the continued dislocation arising from the state of things in the country which itself is not unconnected to the continued misgovernance of the ruling elite, that the question of a debt repayment would result into a scare and the shouting of “thief, thief!” and immediately see a crowd (of restive people who themselves are virtually unemployed) and the vigilante swing to action says much about the alarming figure of youth unemployment conservatively placed at a figure of 24 millions going by official statistics says much of the conditions in our communities.  

This explains why much the DSM condemns the killing and hope against hope that this would not be reenacted, we are however held back by the fact that their seems to be no other way out for the working masses than to continue to retreat into further barbarism, if a struggle is not launched to overthrow the ruling elites and replace them with a working people government that would place the interest and wellbeing of the masses as the basis of governance, engineering the necessary development that would lift and improve the living conditions of the masses. This it can so easily achieve with the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic management of the working people government.   

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