Jungle Justice and the Nigerian Society

By

Nwokocha Chidinma Grace

It was a cool Saturday evening. The sun had just began to set. The Onitsha cloth market was filled to the brim with traders and customers alike, yet the place was as quiet as a graveyard. One could hear a pin drop in the market. The reason for this untold quietness was not far-fetched. For the past one month, traders had been continually harassed by petty thieves, armed robbers and burglars who had dispossessed them of goods and money worth millions of naira. The traders had become tired of the constant harassment and become wary of anybody going in and out of the market. They quietly laid ambush for the perpetrator(s) of the heinous crimes. 

At the far end of the market, little Nina sat quietly in her mother’s dilapidated counter that once served as her cloth store. She sat there brooding and meditating over her life in a few years. Hers was a tale of woes. She had lost her mother when she was very young and her father had immediately married another wife who never cared for her. She barely managed to finish her primary education before dropping out of school to fend for herself. Her mother had a store in the Onitsha cloth market where she sold clothes. The business immediately folded up after her mother’s death. She converted the store to a retail store and began selling chilled sachet waters to traders and customers who patronized the market. As early as 5:00am, when other children were still in bed, she would wake up, rush to the nearby events center to get iced block from their cold-room and rush to the market to open her store and begin the day’s business. She sustained herself from whatever gain she made from the business. She soon forgot about going to secondary school and began to settle down to her new life.

Her father had another child, a boy from his new wife. Recently, all three of them were involved in a ghastly motor accident which claimed the lives of other occupants of the vehicle and had since been hospitalized. So she was saddled with the additional responsibility of cooking their meals and taking care of other household expenses from the little gain she made from her pure water business.

She was still pondering over this when Ebuka passed by and stopped to say hello. Ebuka was the son of one of the cloth sellers at the far end of the market. His mother was successful in her business and spoilt him with everything he needed. After her parents were hospitalized, Ebuka started making passes at her which she politely turned down because she knew that Ebuka’s mother hated her mother when she was alive and Ebuka’s mother was the best friend to her step mother. She therefore avoided her like a plague. Ebuka left as hurriedly as he came. She checked her watch and discovered it was way past 4:00pm. She had to rush home to prepare the meals and be at the hospital before 5:00pm.

She was still closing her store when she heard a loud cry in the direction of Ebuka’s mother’s shop. She quickly locked her store and raced to the other side of the market, heading for home and making calculations on how to beat time and get to the hospital quickly. She was stopped by people who had gathered around Mama Ebuka. Someone had stolen Mama Ebuka’s box of jewellery and rolls of lace material worth 2.5 million naira. Asked if she had any suspect, Mama Ebuka had said that she had seen Nina pass by her shop while she was out attending to a customer and that it was after that that she discovered the items were missing. Nina was apprehended as she was rushing home and asked to open her store. Suspecting nothing, she immediately did as she was told and there, close to where Ebuka had previously stood, lay the box of jewellery. She was stripped naked, beaten, taken round the market and asked to produce the rolls of lace materials. Her pleas that she knew nothing about the missing items fell on deaf ears and when she could not produce the remaining items, a tyre was put round her neck, someone brought petrol and poured on her while another lit a match and threw on her. She went aflame.

From the corner of her shop, Madam Comfort watched the drama unfold. She knew that Nina never stole anything from anybody. She had watched from the beginning and noticed when Ebuka dropped the box of jewellery on the pretext of saying hello. She knew that Mama Ebuka had accused Nina falsely simply because she hated her late mother and not because she was convinced of Nina’s guilt. She knew all these and chose to keep quiet because of her sister who was Nina’s stepmother and who would do anything to get Nina out of her way. This was an opportunity for her, she thought.

As Nina burnt to death, another noise was heard close to the main road. This time it was the police. They had apprehended Ebuka while he was trying to give the rolls of lace materials to his girlfriend and her mother and arrested him. He confessed that he stole the lace materials from his mother’s shop to give as a bride price to his girlfriend’s mother to enable him marry her. As part of his plan to get away without being caught, he had also stolen the box of jewellery and hidden in Nina’s shop without her knowledge. He knew how much his mother hated Nina and knew that she would be his mother’s first suspect once his mother discovers the missing items.

Ebuka was dragged by the angry mob who had joined the police in beating him, together with his girlfriend and her mother to where Nina was burning. The fire was immediately put out but Nina had burnt to death before the fire was put out. Her charred remains presented such a gory sight to all who were present. The police, acting on impulse, rounded up the market and arrested everybody.

They have been charged with the murder of Nina, advice the following persons on their respective criminal liability:

1. Ebuka
2. Mama Ebuka
3. Madam Comfort
4. The mob
5. The onlookers who did nothing to prevent Nina from being burnt alive
6. Ebuka’s girlfriend and her mother.

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