Must Read: Is this who we are?

This month is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a month commemorated around the world to increase awareness of domestic abuse, and hopefully begin to lift the silence and eradicate this challenge.
This week, I would have used this platform to talk about this issue. But that was until the news broke about the four students of the University of Port Harcourt murdered in Aluu late last week. Now I have to think about violence not only in its domestic garb, but in all its societal expressions.  Violence is beginning to feel all pervasive and suffocating. And one thought runs through my head incessantly: Is this who we are?

Continue after the cut...


There has been a lot of commentary about this and it is difficult to say anything new. But is it not blasé, a sign of how little connected we really are to each other? Or perhaps that is all we can and will eventually do - simply move on to the next violent story, the next videoed rape, the next woman whose husband doused with acid, the next polytechnic or university where people have been gunned down, the next persons who have been unfortunate enough to be caught in a church in Kano. Must we? And is this who we really want to be?
I hear the video is not for the faint-hearted.  I have not seen it. I have sought to shield myself directly from the onslaught of anger and pain that I am certain would attack my senses should I leave myself open. And yet it has tormented me, the thought of what it must be like to shout and beg and be beaten down and set on fire. The idea that someone stood by and took a video as the murders took place has plagued my mind. The fact that murders like this are not new; that burnings and jungle justice are not now likely to end even in the face of the uproar of well-meaning and pained people makes me feel a little more hopeless. The likelihood that justice might not be done has haunted me. The pain that the mothers and fathers of these boys must be going through now has threatened to undo me.
A young relative expressed his surprise about the vehement reaction that the killings have drawn.  Is this a sign of self-protection via numbness, this desensitisation of our young to news of violence? Does this bode well for all of us? Killing of thieves is not new, he assured me. I did not counter that there were reports that said that they were not thieves. In the twenty-first century, should I really have to argue that even unarmed thieves do not deserve to be beaten and burnt? And yet his reaction, which he told me was roundly condemned by his BlackBerry group, was not altogether false. Mob justice continues unabated in this country.  
As for videos being made about, and photos being taken of, and emails being sent around of, rapes and child molestations, suicides, and murders, especially in cases where people could and should be intervening or scrambling to find help, perhaps that is also an unavoidable accompaniment to technological advances in Nigeria’s age of violence, and seemingly new-found culture of insensitivity. Is this who we have become?
Today, I mourn. I cannot think beyond people murdering others in cold blood. I have no solutions to propose, no linkages to draw between violence and health, no interconnections to make between those and law and policy. I do not bemoan governmental dysfunction, the ineptitude of law enforcement officials, the failure of regulatory agencies, or lack of personal responsibility. I have just these questions: Is this who we are? Are we happy with what we have become?
May their souls, and the souls of all those who have had their lives caught short in violent, senseless, wicked, and painful ways in our country this year, rest in peace.

 -Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia


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