OPINION
When Does a Nation Die?
By Chidi Amuta
Recent trends in our national life have forced Nigerians to abandon the virtue of incurable optimism and unconditional hope in the nation as a perpetual reality. It used to be that in all circumstances, Nigerians would never believe that the nation is under any terminal threat.
But in recent times, the percentage of Nigerians awaiting the imminent collapse of the nation has now far outnumbered the minority still hoping that the country will survive its present travails. It seems that we are fast approaching that slippery joint where it is hard to find any believers in the survival and meaning of Nigeria. Instead, throughout the length and breadth of this vast land, a new and unhappy consensus has emerged: Nigeria is dying!The usual refrain of “God is in control” or “This, too, shall pass” in difficult times has given way to a silent indignation and resignation. A silent poor woman who used to be a trader in trivia at the roadside has nothing left to sell and no money to buy what she needs. She raises her open palms skywards in speechless supplication as tears stream down her cheeks. She has become for me an embodiment of the tragedy of the times in which we now live.
By a curious irony with a tinge of tragicomedy, the Tinubu government is trumpeting ‘hope’ as its most important offering. The regime has adopted what it calls “the Renewed Hope Agenda” as its mantra and unique caption of the -mandate of this presidency. In a note of tragic irony bordering on self -deprecation and mockery, each appearance of the President at a public forum (including gatherings of judges!), a new regime anthem titled “On Your Mandate, We shall stand” has become informally mandatory. It sometimes precedes the old resurrected National Anthem. It sounds more like a comic choir rented to laugh at a nation in the throes of death.
Suddenly, we seem to have arrived at this unhappy consensus: Nigeria is dying! This existential admission of the imminent death of our nation is the unfolding legacy of our endangered democracy. Our elections lack credibility or popular following. In recent elections in Ondo, Edo and Anambra states, the consistent average voter turnout has been below 35%. People register to vote but find nothing worth voting for. They are taking stock of previous years of this ritual of voting and find nothing cheery. They just stay home instead of being counted as part of the statistics of deceit and betrayal.
As it turns out, the greater percentage of this miserable recent turnout are even transactional votes. On the election days, partisan buyers and sellers of votes mount point of sale checkpoints at most polling booths. Your voters’ card entitles you to a miserable cash handout: N2000-N5000. T could be higher depending on the cash power of the contestants. The votes that show up at INEC’s voter machines represent the balance sheet of total sales and purchases made at all the polling stations at the election.
Other aspects of our democracy are equally in disarray. The party system is shattered. The ruling party has become a power monopoly intent on swallowing other parties. The major opposition party, the PDP, has a resident destabilizer with a single mandate: to kill the party and ensure that it is its carcass that walks into the next general election. The rest of the opposition platform has been frightened into disarray by sundry agents of the state and party in power. The various alliances and rumours of alliances are merely scare crows manipulated by agents of the ruling party.
In itself, the ruling party is saddled with hand -picked officials who make no distinction between the party as an institution of democracy and the government in power or indeed between the political party and the state. A democracy in which there is no distinction between the party in power and the party in government leads to a degrading usurpation of the state by the political elite of the ruling party. A factional elite cannot govern a state without wholly appropriating the machinery of the state to its individual and collective advantage. State capture is complete when the leading lights of the ruling hegemonic party become also the leading lights of the nation. The likes of Wike, Umahi and Akpabio become the faces of the nation. These constantly nattering Nabobs of current power negativity have been elevated to the status of arbiters of values for the nation. They brandish their wealth and false identities to frighten ordinary citizens.
In itself, the business of governance under Mr. Tinubu has become a humdrum ritual of boring reflexes. Great national happenings are marked by high school grade routine statements from the pinnacle of power. No actions are initiated. Once a presidential pronouncement is signed off, the leadership moves on to await the next tragic checkpoint. The life of the nation progresses from one tragedy as preparation for the next. No action plan follows the train of tragedies and failures. Just move on in the hope that tomorrow will be a better day, without bad news and disheartening occurrences. But bad news has become our new normal.
Whatever happens to the nation, one sector never sleeps. Politics of anyhow and anything remains in business. Politicians keep decamping from other parties or no parties to the ruling party in droves. No need to state why people are decamping. The parties they are coming from or the one they are migrating to stand for nothing. No ideology. No core beliefs. Nothing. And in any case, there are no consequences for changing parties like filthy underpants. So the beat goes on: breakfast in Labour Party. Lunch in PDP. Dinner in APC. Even those in the ruling party either as cabinet members or legislators do nothing in particular to justify their large charges on the public treasury. In return for doing practically nothing, a bunch of jobless politicians earn an entitlement to costly SUVs, free housing, large entourages of domestic and official minions and vast troves of cash in all currencies as kickbacks and contractors’ gift packs. There is delight in chasing off road users with limitless motorcades of official nonentities escorted by authorized state hooligans in uniform.
While politicians luxuriate in plenty, the daily life of our citizenry is mirred in want and penury. Recent policy measures have further eroded the living standards of the ordinary Nigerian. An endless litany of taxes, levies and tolls has rendered every item of living cost unaffordable. Prices of everything ranging from gasoline to cooking gas, school fees to transport fares, basic medication to hospital bills and building materials have shot through the roof. Even if these were elements of economic management, nothing has been put in place to indicate that the state has a compassionate aspect. Instead, there is an unhidden hand of cruelty in new policies. A few days ago, the government expressed an intention to impose a 15% surcharge on the already astronomical prices of gasoline. Only the fear of mass protests as in Kenya, Tanzania and Algeria frightened the government into pulling back on this tax on an existing tax regime on gasoline!
While the public keeps expecting the government of the day to alleviate mass suffering, the very essence of our national existence is eroded by the day. The most elementary obligation of the state, the protection of life and property, is everywhere in peril. People are now dying daily on an industrial scale. Terrorists, jihadists, bandits, gangsters, casual criminals compete with each other as to how many they kill, abduct, dispossess or cause to disappear.
Those paid by the state to protect the rest of us look on in indifference or manifest the most embarrassing incompetence in the discharge of the duties. At best, none performing or delinquent security officials are fired in droves with no explanations to the public. The other day, the DSS sacked over 100 officers with no public explanation. These hounds have been unleashed into the amorphous public space to heighten an insecurity that has defied decades of tepid government effort. These are officers who are trained in weapon handling and other skills that they will easily deploy to increase our insecurity.
A state that cannot guarantee basic security of life and limbs of citizens has of course failed to protect and guarantee its territorial integrity. Nigerians no longer know where Nigeria stops and bandit territory begins. Every other forest, savannah stretch and unoccupied building in Nigeria is now an ungoverned space literally owned and inhabited by non- state actors. The possession of arms and weapons of war used to be the exclusive preserve of the state. Guns and uniforms used to frighten ordinary people off government. Not anymore. Now, the most sophisticated weapons of war are in the hands of terrorists, bandits and sundry criminals. The most garish uniforms are now worn by non-state organized squads. Jihadists in rags now outgun our best kitted military units. Literally, the Nigerian state has been outgunned by the forces of those that do not wish us well and the government of the day looks on in sheepish incompetence. In some states, elected governors’ stage ‘peace’ meetings with bandit leaders and their armed cohorts while the police and military provide “security” in full view of television cameras. So, whose nation is this anyway?
Only recently, a symbolic drama was staged on the streets of Abuja. In a motor park -like encounter, FCT minister, Nyesom Wike was engaged by a mid -level Naval officer in an encounter over landed property. Instructively, the military high command sided unanimously with the naval officer. In this symbolic scuffle between the military and political wings of the ruling elite, the military asserted itself stiffly as a contender in the game of political supremacy. In an atmosphere where a rumoured coup is being investigated, wise politicians have since sided with the military in this land grab encounter. Wike, a noisy political jackal with scant common sense has been stripped naked and left sulking alone.
The justice system is not left out of the hopelessness. Even in cases where the law is challenged to defend and protect the rights of individuals or track and punish violators of the law, the Nigerian judiciary has been consistently wanting. Judges deliver judgments to fit their bills. Material appeasement of the highest echelons of the judiciary in the form of cash, automobiles, free houses and unaccounted vacations have blurred the boundaries between justice and injustice. The rights of citizens now have a price tag.
The agencies of public accountability only exist to hound those whom the state does not like. The police arrests and detains those it adjudges state adversaries while authorized criminals roam and wax freely. Public protest against misrule and injustice is rewarded with tear gas and bullets and prolonged incarceration without charges or trial. A nation in which the Accountant General can steal most of the funds in the treasury without setting off any audit alarm is at best a rogues’ piggy bank guarded by squads of pick pockets.
Our general perception in the world outside our borders has tumbled to an all-time low. From being the voice of African strength, we have degenerated to a sorry state. Our foreign policy exertions have sunk to a diplomacy of the beggarly. Imagine the recent Threat by Donald Trump in the days of Murtala Mohammed and Obasanjo either as military leader or elected president.
Against the foregoing backdrop, citizen loyalty and confidence in the state has dropped to near zero. The common man in the streets who used to be proud of his nation in spite of its faults has withdrawn to his or her tent. People are more concerned about surviving to the next day than bother about the niceties of national survival and community. At best, people are now cursing and abusing Nigeria. Many now wish they were never born here. Our passport and identity have become badges of shame abroad. Most significantly, a nation that used to believe that God will ultimately rescue the nation has lost that last anchor of hope in divine provenance and providence. Citizens have begun to doubt the efficacy of divine solution that will save the nation as it is today.
While a general disillusionment has eroded hope and confidence in the nation, the government of the day cannot find the courage to compare itself to any of its predecessors. But governments do not exist in isolation. They derive their credibility from fitting themselves into a historical spectrum provided by their predecessors.
It is not for us to pronounce judgment on the Tinubu government in terms of its record of performance. From the return of democracy in 1999 to the present, citizens can now pick and choose when they last had a good meal, affordable life or peace of mind from insecurity. We miss Obasanjo’s banking reforms and liberalization of the stock market. We miss his initiative in opening up the telecommunications market. We miss the introduction of debit and credit cards and cashless platforms in the economy. We miss the Jonathan era before he found himself in the midst of Boko Haram. Looking back now, who will not prefer the Naira at 175 to the dollar and multiple access to credit for consumption and business? Or a bag of cement at a little over N2,000? Even Buhari’s N400-N500 to the dollar cannot be compared to today’s hellish N1,500 to the dollar. Or gasoline at N185 a liter compared to today’s N1,000 average for a liter at the pump.
Obasanjo was feared as a strong willed warrior, respected as a nationalist elder statesman and accepted by all as a detribalized national leader. Yar’dua was admired as a man of Spartan discipline and honest patriotism. Jonathan never pretended to be what he is not. He said he would not make too many promises for fear of failing to deliver on any. Buhari was a patent ethnicist, religious fanatic and unrepentant autocrat but he would rather borrow to keep his rusty government going than impose further suffering on the ordinary people.
Against the record of his predecessors since 1999, Tinubu will bear the burden of self -assessment at the end of his remaining two years. Put simply, Tinubu will judge Tinubu. Whether his eventual assessment will be confirmed or repudiated by the electoral outcome of the 2027 election is a puzzle that Nigerian democracy will have to unravel in the years ahead.
The questions are simple: Will Nigerians renew the mandate of a leader who is subjecting them to such harrowing hardship? Will the majority of Nigerians vote again for a party that has been responsible for such ruinous misrule of the nation for over a decade?
By Uddin Ifeanyi
I am not an accountant, so my opinion on the NNPCL’s recently released 2025 annual financial report is a qualified one. It matters, therefore, that PwC, the audit and assurance firm which signed off on the report, has no doubt that it represents a true and fair view of the corporation’s performance under the country’s reporting standards.
Far more comforting was my former colleague’s response to the report’s release: “Wonderful! While I was working in the bank, as the Corporate Banking Group’s relationship manager for the NNPC, the ‘most recent’ financials we had was about 15 years old”.
That was some 15 years ago. In terms of accountability and public disclosure, then, Nigeria’s most important corporation over the last 49 years is making steady progress.That said, significant parts of the picture of a profitable company undergirded by improving production, which the report tries so convincingly to take, are out of focus. It is a fair argument that the report’s headline profit growth figure appears to overstate the improvement in the corporation’s underlying trading performance. Why this blur? The NNPC Group’s net profit rose by about 33 per cent to ₦7.2 trillion last year, despite a 23 per cent drop in revenue from ₦45.1 trillion in 2024, to ₦34.5 trillion last year.
Gross profit was down by equivalent percentage points to ₦9.4 trillion in the same period. While two different lines, a ₦5 trillion rise in other income, and a ₦1 trillion fall in general and administrative expenses, explain this seeming contradiction, the resulting problem is not that the increase in the corporation’s profit last year did not come from increased sales or gross profits. It is instead included in the answer to the question, “How repeatable will the ‘other income’ performance be in future accounting periods?”
The corporation’s balance sheet is a smorgasbord of paints off a similarly nuanced canvas. With a current ratio of about 0.85, the NNPCL’s short-term assets (₦28.1 trillion) do not quite make up for its short-term liabilities (₦33.2 trillion). With the right timing, depending on the nature of its account payables, and the makeup of its receivables, the corporation ought to be able to easily meet its obligations. This balance sheet structure has one other purpose: it helps make sense of the corporation’s cash pressure.
The group’s cash balance was down from ₦10.3 trillion in 2024 to ₦6.4 trillion by financial year end 2025. This, despite an increase in cash generated from operations to ₦12.9 trillion in 2025 from ₦11.0 trillion the previous year. Trade and other receivables fell from the ₦31.4 trillion at which it printed in 2024, but even at ₦19.7 trillion, last year, it remained substantial.
On the upside, there is plentiful evidence of a production recovery. Still the chorus of “Hallelujahs” are pressed in on two sides by the narrative section of the report’s claim of average crude and condensate production of 1.77 million barrels per day – a five-year high, and the financial highlights’ listing of 565.8 million barrels of crude oil production. On the face of it, annualised, the latter number translates into about 1.55 million barrels per day of production.
My guess is that these two figures address different scopes — i.e. national production as against the NNPCL’s own or equity production. Any which way, the report could have helped make this reconciliation easier. Equal levels of clarity could have been facilitated by tying natural gas production directly to segment revenue, investment returns, and cash generation.
Overall, the NNPCL report indicates considerable operating progress. Operating cash generation is especially impressive. Nonetheless, the dip in revenue and gross profit, the facts that profit growth is almost entirely the result of large other income performance, and that current liabilities swamp current assets, make the headline profit an incomplete gauge of the organisation’s financial strength.
For more than a decade now, the dominant presence in the room when the NNPC’s accounts are discussed is the extent of outgoings on the subsidy for the pump-gate price of petrol. And this is the main reason I paid this much attention to the corporation’s annual report for last year – to see how far the corporation’s numbers corroborate the federal government’s insistence that it has removed the subsidy completely.
How do the numbers stack up? The corporation’s financial statements continue to use categories such as “energy security” and “under-recovery.” These are not exactly identical terms. Energy security expenses may include more than petrol price support.
Interestingly, the NNPCL’s financial statement for 2024 reports ₦8.67 trillion as an “under-recovery” balance. Other coverage in the 2025 statement describes ₦8.67 trillion as a “federation receivable.” Both labels and reporting periods are not interchangeable, but if either means that the corporation continues to cover a gap between petrol’s supply cost and a managed selling price, and records the amount as recoverable from the federation, the economic burden from the fuel subsidy has not disappeared. It has simply been absorbed by the NNPCL or the federation, rather than fully passed on to consumers.
Uddin Ifeanyi, a journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.
By Mark Longyen
West Africa’s climate crisis is becoming harder to separate from the region’s familiar struggles with poverty, displacement, food insecurity, resource competition and violent conflict.
That convergence framed the ECOWAS Parliament’s Second 2026 Extraordinary Session and Second Parliamentary Seminar in Accra, Ghana.
It was themed “Climate Change as a Driver of Environmental Degradation, Population Displacement and Growing Insecurity in the ECOWAS Region.
”Beyond the speeches and warnings, the week-long meeting posed a harder question: can ECOWAS convert long standing climate commitments into funded, coordinated and measurable action?
The Parliament’s adopted resolutions offered one answer, urging ECOWAS leaders to consider establishing a regional fund dedicated to climate resilience and human security.
The lawmakers also called for climate resilience to be integrated into national budgets, development plans, land-use policies, conflict-prevention mechanisms and disaster-risk reduction strategies.
They further called for the ECOWAS Commission to develop a five-year implementation roadmap for translating the recommendations into practical measures.
These proposals attempt to move the regional climate conversation from declarations towards institutional mechanisms capable of producing measurable results.
Yet, the Parliament’s own assessment exposed the obstacles.
Speaker Hadja Mémounatou Ibrahima was blunt in her closing address.
“Our region doesn’t lack strategies nor instruments.
“What West Africa lacks are the financing and political will required to implement existing frameworks and transform them into visible and tangible assets for citizens,” she said.
That diagnosis goes to the heart of the region’s climate dilemma, where policies exist, but implementation frequently falls behind ambition.
Earlier, in her opening address, Ibrahima urged lawmakers to view climate disruption through its consequences for ordinary people rather than through statistics alone.
“Climate disruption can no longer be measured only in degrees, statistics or projections,” she said, citing declining land productivity, retreating coastlines, flooded neighbourhoods and displaced families.
For her, the fundamental question was how governments could protect citizens when environmental change was occurring faster than their capacity to adapt.
Ghana’s Vice-President, Prof. Jane Opoku-Agyemang, reinforced that perspective, saying climate change and environmental degradation were compounding pressures on livelihoods and food security.
“Climate change is both a development and a security challenge,” she said, urging ECOWAS states to move from reactive crisis management towards proactive resilience-building.
Her prescription included stronger early-warning systems, resilient agriculture, water management, coastal protection and clean-energy investment.
She also linked climate resilience to youth opportunities, arguing that education, skills and economic empowerment could help prevent environmental pressures from becoming drivers of insecurity.
The financial dimension emerged starkly in a presentation by Dr Derek Sarfo-Yiadom of Ghana’s Environmental Protection Authority.
He disclosed that Ghana would require an estimated 22.6 billion dollars by 2030 to implement its climate actions and strengthen resilience.
“When we put our climate reports together, we found out that we needed 22.6 billion dollars to accomplish our climate actions by the year 2030,” he said.
Sarfo-Yiadom argued that vulnerability assessments must identify not merely climate hazards, but the people exposed, barriers to recovery, responsible institutions, available budgets and measurable outcomes.
He called for stronger early-warning systems, improved drainage, resilient infrastructure and measures supporting rural livelihoods through climate services, crop diversity and better soil-water management.
At the regional level, ECOWAS climate expert Raoul Kouamé highlighted the challenge of translating commitments into implementation, especially where institutional capacities and financing remain uneven.
His argument reinforced a central lesson from the Accra conference; climate governance cannot succeed through isolated national interventions when rivers, ecosystems, migration routes and environmental risks cross borders.
Guinean parliamentarian Bademba Baldé said lawmakers identified effective implementation, financing and national ownership among the principal obstacles confronting regional climate action.
The Parliament consequently connected climate vulnerability with displacement, competition over land and water, pastoral mobility and resource-related conflicts.
That connection is especially important for West Africa, where environmental stress can amplify existing economic, social and security vulnerabilities.
The recommendations therefore went beyond environmental protection, seeking to embed climate resilience within development planning, conflict prevention and disaster-risk management.
For Nigeria and other vulnerable member states, the implications are substantial, given recurring floods, droughts, land degradation, food insecurity and competition over natural resources.
The Accra resolutions also raise an institutional question; how effectively can the ECOWAS Parliament drive implementation when its role remains principally consultative?
Nigerian lawmakers, including Sen. Ali Ndume and Awaji Abiante, argued that strengthening the Parliament’s legislative powers would enhance its ability to scrutinise regional and national responses.
That debate gives the climate question a governance dimension: ambitious recommendations require institutions with sufficient authority to monitor compliance, demand accountability and sustain political attention.
The Parliament itself recognised this when it stressed that its credibility would depend on decisions producing concrete and measurable improvements in citizens’ lives.
Its closing position was both ambitious and cautionary, noting that resolutions must not become another archive of unimplemented regional commitments.
The adoption of the seminar’s outcome document gave the climate agenda an institutional pathway.
The proposed regional resilience fund offers a potential financing mechanism, and the five-year roadmap, if effectively developed and monitored, could provide the continuity often missing from regional climate initiatives.
Stakeholders insist, however, that money alone will not resolve the crisis.
They say political ownership, institutional coordination, national legislation, community participation and credible monitoring will be equally decisive in translating commitments into action.
The Accra deliberations therefore shifted the focus from whether West Africa understands its climate crisis to whether governments and regional institutions are prepared to govern against it.
The real test now lies in whether governments, ECOWAS institutions and national parliaments will finance, implement and monitor the commitments reached.
For West Africa, the climate crisis is no longer waiting for another declaration. It is demanding decisions, resources and action.
Accra has provided the diagnosis and a framework.
The credibility of the ECOWAS Parliament’s climate push will ultimately be measured by what follows after the conference. (NAN)
By Mukhtar Dambatta
In Nigeria, an accusation of theft can turn a calm crowd into a dangerous mob within minutes.
Someone shouts, “Ole!” “Barawo!” “Onyeoshi!” or “Thief!” and people begin to gather.
Before anyone asks what happened or whether the allegation is true, sticks, stones, and other objects may become weapons.By the time the police arrive, the accused person may already be badly injured or dead.
Jungle justice, or mob violence, is an illegal act where a crowd bypasses the legal system to punish a suspect without a fair trial or formal proof of guilt
The practice has continued in spite of the existence of courts, police and other institutions established to investigate crimes and administer justice.
One of the cases that brought the issue sharply into national focus was the killing of the “Aluu Four”.
In October 2012, four students of the University of Port Harcourt, Chiadika Biringa, Ugonna Obuzor, Lloyd Toku and Tekena Elkanah were attacked and killed in Aluu community, Rivers, after they were accused of stealing.
They were beaten and set ablaze by a mob. Images of the incident circulated widely, prompting public outrage and renewed calls for an end to mob justice.
But similar incidents have continued.
In March 2025, 16 travellers were killed by a mob in Uromi, Edo, after being accused of being kidnappers.
Reports identified the victims as hunters travelling from the South to the North.
President Bola Tinubu condemned the killings and directed security agencies to investigate the incident and prosecute those responsible.
The Uromi killings again raised concerns about what can happen when suspicion and fear replace investigation.
On July 26, 25-year-old Ibrahim Mbaya, popularly known as “Ibee”, was allegedly attacked by a mob in Jos, Plateau, after being accused of stealing an iPhone 12.
He was later taken to the Jos University Teaching Hospital, where he was confirmed dead.
The Police Command in Plateau announced the arrest of suspects in connection with the incident.
Recently, the Inspector-General of Police (I-G), Mr Olatunji Disu, gave a directive that jungle justice would be treated as homicide.
A security advocacy group, the Security Situation Room (SSR) backed the group described mob action as an invitation to anarchy.
The President of SSR, Mr Douglas Ogbankwa, said perpetrators of extra-judicial killings must be held accountable for their actions.
He said that the directive was timely, considering the spate of mob attacks and extra-judicial killings in the country.
“Of course, this directive is timely. Allowing people to resort to strong-arm tactics in solving criminal activities is an invitation to anarchy.
“It is like taking the country to the Hobbesian state of nature, where life was nasty, brutish and short.”
Ogbankwa said the existence of government could be traced to the social contract theory, under which citizens surrendered certain liberties to enable constituted authorities to govern and protect them.
He said allowing individuals to take the law into their hands would undermine the purpose of government and the rule of law.
“The reason we have a government is traceable to the social contract theory, where the people agree to have people who will govern, protect them and take care of their welfare.
“So, if individuals are allowed to have the liberty of taking the law into their hands, then that is simply taking us to the Stone Age without laws,” he said.
The convener noted that every society was governed by laws, adding that the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) provided lawful avenues for resolving grievances.
He said the Police Act 2020 empowered the police to detect and investigate crimes and arrest those suspected of committing offences within their jurisdiction.
Ogbankwa consequently called for strict adherence to the I-G’s directive, adding that individuals must learn to be personally accountable for their actions or inactions.
On a similar note, a security analyst, Ahmed Umar, said the response to suspected crime should begin with reporting and investigation rather than punishment by a crowd.
“Allowing people to take the law into their own hands could result in the killing of innocent people who might later be found not to have committed any offence,’’ he said.
More so, a legal practitioner, Yusuf Aliyu Yusuf, said an accusation was not the same as proof of guilt.He said the responsibility of determining whether a person had committed a crime belonged to the appropriate institutions established by law.
In his submission, Barau Kawu, a community leader, said communities also had a role to play in preventing mob attacks by discouraging rumours and immediately reporting suspected criminal activities to security agencies.
“Community members should avoid taking action based solely on allegations or information received from others,’’ he said.
Getting an accurate national figure for deaths resulting from jungle justice is difficult.
Human rights organisations and other researchers have documented hundreds of cases over the years, but the actual number is difficult to establish.
Many incidents, particularly in communities far from major towns, may never reach the police, courts or mainstream media.
Analysts say a major factor behind the practice is public distrust of law enforcement institutions.
Where citizens believe that suspects may escape justice or that criminal cases will not be handled effectively, some may become tempted to punish accused persons themselves.
The country’s worsening insecurity has also made people more suspicious of strangers and unfamiliar situations.
Kidnapping, banditry and other violent crimes have affected communities across the country. In such an environment, suspicion can spread quickly.
Section 33 of the 1999 Constitution protects the right to life, subject to the exceptions stated in the Constitution.
The law provides for allegations to be investigated and suspects to be tried in court.
That process cannot be replaced by a crowd.
The danger is that the person being attacked may not even be responsible for the alleged offence.
“A stolen phone may have been misplaced; a misunderstanding may have been mistaken for criminal behaviour; a person may have been wrongly identified.
“Once a mob attack begins, however, there is often little opportunity for the truth to emerge; ending jungle justice will require more than condemning each incident after it happens.
“It will require proper investigations, prosecution of those responsible and greater confidences in the justice system.
“Citizens also need to understand that reporting a suspected crime is different from punishing a suspect.
“The police and courts have the responsibility to investigate allegations and determine guilt according to the law,’’ a social commentator said.
For communities, the challenge is to resist acting on rumours and accusations before the facts are known.
Experts agree that criminal accusations must be legally investigated and tried in court. When justice is taken into the streets, a mere accusation can instantly become an irreversible death sentence.(NAN)
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