The tragic question is: Who killed the 103 Nigerian citizens set to be buried by the government?
According to reports, the Lagos State Government, in setting the record straight, has stated that the 103 bodies were picked by the Lagos State Environmental Health Unit (SEHMU) in the aftermath of the EndSARS protest from different locations across the state since October, 2020.
Again, who took the lives of 103 citizens since October, 2020 in a swoop act of brutality? Nobody or agency has been held accountable. No explanation. No consequences. The issue is fact being forgotten.
These citizens died under an unresolved circumstances in one of the most callous act of brutality in the country. It has been shrouded in secrecy. The cause of their death is being played down and politicized. Their identities have not be established to help their families and relatives identify and give them a decent farewell.
It is heart-rending that those meant to guard and protect have no simplest regard for life. These Nigerians were fiendishly mowed down whilst clutching the Nigeria national flag in their quest for a better Nigeria. We must not forget that their supreme sacrifices came at a fragile time of looming hopelessness that brutally pervaded the fate of the people.
It is regrettable that those whose mandate it was to secure them, cut them in their prime. Otherwise, how would one explain the sudden discovery of bodies of citizens stacked in the morgue and now set to be covered with the rubbles of dug up sand in a mass burial.
Families have been put to endless pain; wring their hands in excruciating pains. Till date families and relatives have not located their loved ones who left their homes in a quest for a better Nigeria. Children would grow up not knowing their parents, who never returned home after that fateful day. The tide of time has been turned backwards in so many homes and families. Breadwinners lost forever.
It makes no difference if these bodies were causalities during the jail-break at Ikoyi Prisons during the ENDSARS protest. In any event, this claim has not been credibly demonstrated by the government. Even if they were, it does not offer a reasonable justification for the brute act as no one has a better right to live than the other.
The perfidious stance of the government is exposed by the fact that the bodies of these innocent citizens were prepared, cleaned up and the pellets of the bullets removed in a deliberate scheme to cover up the murder. Who did, authorized and supervised all these.
No amount to cover-up or secrecy can normalize the brutish murder of citizens, just as the cover up has overwhelmed the actors and now came to a limelight outside their making.
This case is a clear reminder of the era of mysterious deaths and disappearance in Rwanda, where citizens died or disappeared for criticizing the government. Also in the dark days of misrule in Uganda, murder and disappearance of citizens were rife and a common occurrence. By the end of the Idi Amin misrule, unresolved deaths were put at about 80, 000.
In any event, it is no new thing in Nigeria. Citizens had been mowed down in unresolved circumstances and without consequences. This is one too many. The security agencies has the national burden of resolving the circumstances of these murders. There must be responsibility. Otherwise, the security agencies and those that acted in preparing the bodies and removing the death-causing pellets of bullets must be held responsible. It is a question of integrity.
We must not forget that the inviolability of life and its implied protection is a fundamental tribute of good governance. This is as sanctity of human life sits at the centre of human civilization. Even the brutish government of the dark-days in human history does not take life casually. In wars, rivals, even with their mindless hunt for adversaries, still observe limits to brutality and excessive misuse of force. This distinguishes human from the beast.
Obviously, this callous act has further exposed the total lapse in good governance and social accountability in Nigeria. It marks a governance failure and exposes the ineffectiveness of the governance process and the agencies of government. It clearly portends unfathomable danger to our democracy that 103 citizens of no mean importance were murdered and their bodies picked on the streets, yet no explanations have been made and no one held responsible till date.
There may be no justice for these 103 citizens, but for the sake of humanity, we must never stop to ask: who killed the 103 Nigerian citizens whose bodies were picked from different locations across Lagos State?
Indeed, a nation failed them. Ezenwa Ibegbunam, writes from Abuj