Koye-Ladele Mofehintoluwa: Crossing the National Red Lines for Somtochukwu Ibeanusi

Forced evictions are becoming a major national issue. Nigeria as a developing nation it must be noted contains several slums and emergency market outlets that sprouted as the society expanded and population grew in urban areas than through town planning of any sort. The need to demolish these structures has led government agencies to open confrontations with civilians. Recently, it was the same scenario that played out in Lagos at Otodo Gbame where lives were lost and severe injuries recorded.

Yesterday, the Rochas Okorocha adminstration in Imo State ordered the demolition of the Eke Ukwu market. In the process of the demolition, lives were lost and particularly, that of a 10 year old boy.

Forced evictions it would be noted are an infringement on human rights and are in violation of several international treaties to which Nigeria stands among the signatories. Prominent among those are Article 7 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to security of the person in Article 9(1) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to adequate standard of living in the International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, the right to work in Article 6, the right to Property in article 17 of the universal declaration of Human rights, the right to an effective remedy in articles 2, 3 and 26 of international Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

I am wondering why Somtochukwu had to be killed. How much of a threat could this 10 year old boy have been to a trained officer? Did he have weapons on him? How much violence could his little arms offer? Could the military not have demobilised him through some other means if at all he constituted an impediment to the demolition of his mother's shop?

Section 33 of the CFRN 1999 provides right to life but exempts death that may arise in protection from unlawful violence, in order to effect a lawful arrest or prevent the escape of a person lawfully detained and finally for the purpose of suppressing a riot, insurrection or mutiny. The last exemption is what provides a shield for these murderers who keep claiming they had to do it to suppress riots. But how riotous could this boy have been? A mad man pulled that trigger. An animal. A bestial creature.

In a case like this, there is really no need to hear the narrative of the police or the military. How much resistance could this child have offered that necessarily warranted his being shot by live ammunition? What exactly could he have done that would have had no other reply except through guns and bullets?

Somtochukwu was shot at the back of his head and the bullet went through his skull leading to his death. It suffices that he was not even facing the officer who fired him directly. It is logical enough that the point of penetration indicated he looked away from the assault. For a boy of his age, it was more likely he was attempting to escape. An example must be made of these extra judicial killings. The law must curtail future occurrences by making a strong statement through a severe punitive sentence on one of the men of the force that have been involved in this criminality under the guise of enforcing government orders.

The same Governor goes to the market when elections are near, buys corn from these illegal shops and outlets which he suddenly discovers a need to demolish, eats it while walking through the markets all because he needed their votes as at then or some street credibility and popularity.

In all these, one still has cause to wonder if Nigeria is at all worth living for.

Whoever did this would birth children and pray to a God that he makes those children live? Whoever fired this shot would still get to eat, drink, live and continue life without the image running through his head?

And my words for whoever did this are from Soyinka's Kongi Harvest

"Imprecations then, curses on all inventors of agonies, on all messiahs of pain and false burdens. On all who fashion chains, on farmers of terror, on builders of walls, on all who guard the night but breed darkness by the day, on all whose feet are heavy yet stand upon the world. On all who see, not with eyes of the dead but with the eyes of Death"

And lines from Prof. Niyi Osundare's poem for Dele Giwa

Let my country be
my cause
Not
My curse
Let my country be
My beauty
Not
My beast
Let my land be
My grace
Not
My grave