The dead will be murdered again by rotten partisan politics while a soulless condolence message will be sent to her family.
The tragic murder of lawyer Bolanle by a trigger-happy killer cop and the national anger that it rightly receives shows many Nigerians are still normal but politics, religion and tribe make them mad at times.
If Bolanle had been killed by an escort in a convoy of a politically exposed person for "disrupting" the speedy passage of the rogue politician, one can be sure that opinions and responses will vary based on the party, colour of the conscience and blood of the responders. And sympathy for the casualty or not will also depend on what their party and paymasters say on the issue before their automated Abobakus start to repeat it.
The dead will be murdered again by rotten partisan politics while a soulless condolence message will be sent to her family. Such a soulless message always starts after tactically justifying the murder with: "However" "Anyway", "In any case.." Many people are mad and politics of no principle and no conscience made them so.
What if Bolanle had been hatcheted to death by self-acclaimed religious murderers for purported blasphemy, would the national anger be the same? Definitely no. Many people will go back straight to their religious ranch of faith and become jubilant accomplices to murder depending on the intensity of their fanaticism. The liberal religionists even among human rights activism will immediately keep a loud silence to play safe.
Many political candidates that rose in unison to condemn the murder of Bolanle now would have lost their voices immediately. Their speech writers and rascally spokespersons would have disappeared from the air temporarily. And those who managed to tweet condemning her death would have deleted it and given a funny reason. In Nigeria and to our rogue politicians, vote is better and more valuable than life is the code of election victory.
Some would condemn the criminal act in hushed tones in a new style of see my moving lips but don't hear what I say. Many Nigerians are mad and their kurukere kurukere religious fanaticism made them "madder". Security forces would quickly run away from such crime but with a promise, as usual, that "they are on top of the situation looking for the killers" Shame!
Bolanle was "lucky" to not have been clubbed to death by "kill and go" violent Fulani herdsmen, ESN blood-letting thugs or kidnappers. The language of responses will be different depending on the ethnic colour of the blood of the killers and their sympathizers. Candidates hardly don't condemn ethnic killers during electioneering or when calculating for power on the basis of ethnic vote population balancing. Sad choruses like "Where are the cows?" "They are foreign killers, not Nigerians" "We don't know them" would have been the dirge of passage for the soul of the casualty and the family would be left to "mourn their mourn" with thanksgiving to the Lord/Allah.
So, we are still human as a people only that politics, religion and ethnicity made many people mad, become heartless and stupid for patronage, power, money and position which must be procured at all costs and by all means.
Has the nation got its conscience back with this tragic untimely death of Bolanle? Are these momentarily mad citizens now with their conscience and humanity? Will our lawyers, media, human rights activists, politicians and their Abobakus rise up and defend another Bolanle, poor unknown Bolanle who's a pure water seller, gala hawker, housemaid when shot dead in such a gruesome way or by another criminal way by killer cops or political thugs? I doubt it, but let's hope the criminal murder of Lawyer Bolanle that attracted the attention of the president and all of us will help us to rediscover our humanity as a country. To know that there's equality of life of citizens and no life should be taken extrajudicially and we should never justify any life taken extrajudicially for political, ethnic or religious reasons. We are not in the jungle.
#JUSTICEFORBOLANLE
Adeola Soetan