It is against the law of God and man to maim or kill anybody suspected to be a criminal under the guise of carrying out jungle justice.
Jungle justice is barbaric, cruel, primitive and degrading to humanity. “Thou shall not kill” is a Biblical commandment that runs through other noble spiritual and religious organisations all over the world.
No one has the right to kill or maim another person, without following due, legal and acceptable process through the police and the court.
On Friday, April 5, 2024, tension engulfed Ekpugrinya Ekeja in Ogoja, Cross River state. Duala Mabin, a public affairs analyst in Ogoja, told this writer that jungle justice was meted out to three persons suspected to have killed a three-year-old baby.
Duala alleged that N6 million was paid by the family of the unidentified baby yet, the baby was killed.
In anger, three of those suspected to have masterminded the alleged killing were burnt to ashes by some unnamed persons in the community.
Contacted, the police at the Ogoja divisional police headquarters, with a combined team of military officers, were said to have stormed the scene of the incident and arrested some people, whisked them to the station, where they were detained.
Reacting to the arrest, some indigenes of the community were said to have staged what was initially regarded as a peaceful protest to effect the release of those arrested and detained.
But the matter was alleged to have almost degenerated to a misunderstanding with the protesters maintaining hard-line posture that those arrested were innocent of the jungle justice meted out to the suspected kidnappers.
Eventually, the matter was resolved and tension in Ogoja was averted after those arrested were released to the community.
Community policing is the in-thing all over the world. Crime is a serious, deadly and ever evolving matter and the trend is global. Therefore, we should not leave anti-crime war to the police and other security agents alone.
We all have a duty to watch our backs in our homes, compound, street, community, state and the entire nation.
God bless Nigeria!
Emmanuel Udom
