Like every girl of her age, she had dreams and eyes on the future. She had looked forward to a day she would receive her certfificate, earn a decent living, start a family and assist her poor parents. Again, like every girl, Deborah had a passion. But unlike most of others, her passion was neither fashion nor drugs, neither prostitution nor yahoo-yahoo. It was a faith - a faith that made her believe and behave differently in a community dominated by another faith. Those differences led to her gruesome murder. It was not supposed to be so. The constitution to which Deborah and her murdereers subscribe (or, are obligated to) guarantees the freedoms of speech, association and religion. In a discerning society, these difference are assets and not liabilities. Because they open the door wide to inclusiveness. Different shades of opinions and practices make a nation robust enough to deal with its challenges and strong enough to advance its commonly shared values and dreams. A nation’s robustness and strength are hinged on not obliterating or removing its differences but effectively managing them through mutual acceptance, tolerance and cooperative or legal resolution of conflicts. To be sure, mutual acceptance is a tall order, judging from the claim of every religion as the only way to God. Even then, mutual acceptance is the shortest route to peaceful co-existence and the survival of a multi-cultural and multi-religious nation such as ours. Tolerance is the effective management of our short fuses. Tolerance restrains us from acting disorderly or illegally to the behaviors we dislike or disagree with. It is the capacity to endure pain or hardship arising from differences in opinions, beliefs and practices. Even then, we cannot prevent conflict altogether because as humans the mismanagement of our misunderstanding is inevitable. A nation that is not committed to resolving its religious and other conflicts by following due process is without a soul and will take its ignoble place among the banana republics of this world.
Happily, the two major religions in Nigeria preach tolerance and abhor violent attacks on non-adherents for whatever cause. At least, as enshrined in their holy books. Christians, for one, are enjoined to love their enemies and pray those that despitefully use them. Koran, according to informed Islamic scholars, has no record of injunction to Moslem faithfuls to retaliate on behalf of Allah when under blasphemous provocation by people of other faiths.
Which means that Deborah’s life was cut short in its prime by criminals hiding under religion. You might say, death is death. But Deborah’s death is the saddest display of our beastly nature and the worst case scenario of man’s inhumanity to man. Think about it, she was snatched from the custody of the College’s security, dragged like a criminal into the waiting arms of an intolerant mob, beaten black and blue by lawless people, and burnt like a sacrificial lamb by some of the worst specimens of our nation.
Since then, there has been a cacophony of noises, from the sane to the insane, from the sublime to the ridiculous. A religious leader and a college don openly supported the dastardly act. Miscreants took to the streets denouncing, my apologies, defending the gruesome murder and demanding the release of the arrested suspects. In one rarity, a presidential candidate allowed his humanity to take preference over his religion and politics. But as soon as he was threatened with a loss of a million votes, he denounced his denouncement. It is a season of fear as most other presidential candidates have avoided the issue of the murder like a plague. Even the judge sitting over the case of the two suspects hides behind anonymity for fear of backlashes. But unlike the politicians and the judge, the team of 34 lawyers defending the suspects boldly announced their appearance. Such audacity only lends credence to the fact that the miscreants are not without backers in high and low places.
Which makes Deborah Samuel Yakubu’s untimely death a blight on a nation that calls on its people to arise as compatriots to obey a National call. Obviously, compatriots we are not, and the National call we are flaunting is hard to sell, having been dampened by ethnic and religious bigotry. Until and unless Deborah’s killers are treated as criminals and the law enforcement deploy its full strength to prosecute them, the National call will continue to be a mirage.
In the meantime, let it be known to all that the blood of Deborah is on the hands of all those that excuse criminality on the altar of religion and all the faint hearted that keep quiet for fear of retribution.
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