The Low-Trust Society
by Jídé Salawu
In 2012 while I was at Obafemi Awolowo University completing my first degree, a video of the public lynching of four university students went viral globally. The Aluu Four, as they became known, were undergraduates at the University of Port Harcourt: Ugonna Obuzor, Tekena Elkanah, Chiadika Biringa and Lloyd Toku had visited the nearby community of Aluu, allegedly intending to recover money owed to one of their friends. Instead they were falsely accused of being thieves, and were publicly shamed, brutalized, necklaced, and killed by a vigilante mob.
This story of senseless violence reflected, as it still reflects, the endemic lack of trust in the Nigerian justice system. For many decades it has been the case that the police in Nigeria are to be found, almost always, on the errand of the powerful, leaving the oppressed filled with a permanent sense of fear and betrayal. Mob justice, then, is the warped reaction of a people who have long witnessed the state setting powerful criminals free, and brutalizing those who fall afoul of them.
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