mob /mɒb/: noun. a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.
Its not one mob actually. Its about ten, or a thousand, or a million cohesive mobs. Nigerians are very angry, but can you really blame us? We were bundled together by a man who failed to appreciate our 250 diversities, and named by his side-chick (at the time at least).
In a morally upright society like ours, that makes us all bastards.
Nigeria gained independence from her white daddies and big mummy in 1960.
Nigerians gained independence from Nigeria shortly after. So while we live in Nigeria as a people, we run our own shit, every single day.
When the Government fails to provide basic infrastructure like electricity, we be our own Power providers.
When the roads don’t get fixed, we get gravel and pour into the potholes.
When government fails to build a system that functions enough to ensure the security of lives and property of its people, we just do it ourselves.
Very few things unite people like the mob. People abandon their individual beliefs, differences, all for one purpose; to lynch, loot, pillage.
Lynch lɪn(t)ʃ/: verb. (of a group of people) kill (someone) for an alleged offence without a legal trial.
So when a suspected thief is arrested, we set up a court, right there, on the road, and do what needs to be done to the person. Fuck fair trials. “Burn the bastard”, one would say. “Hit him on his head with that stick and let him feel the pain”, one woman said at a lynching once.
So we’d burn people because we think they snatched a bag, or we’d burn another guy because we think he stared too long at another guy and got a hard-on.
When a driver hits a pedestrian, even though the sane thing to do is to take the driver to the police station and report the case, nope, we don’t.
We just wreck the motherfucker’s car.
And lets say you make it to the police station.
Same mob in uniforms.
Inner light rangers, green paper snatchers, etcetera etcetera. Just because doing the orderly, civilized thing is such a drag.
Let’s take a trip to Kaduna.
A religious procession is marching in one direction. From the other direction is the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff wanting to pass the same road. A general approaches the front line of the convoy. ”Don’t fire”, he says to his soldiers.
Some men step forward from the group of civilians. They want peace, they really do.
But the people behind them are a procession gone mob, and that mob has no plans of letting other people use the public road, that should belong to everyone. There are machetes, huge stones and sticks begging to be used.
So the tensions rise. Friction happens. Mob vs Mob.
Only now, one has guns, the other doesn’t.
It doesn’t end there.
Because the soldiers are the better bigger people, they follow the civilians back to their base, barricade it, more bodies fall.
Just because they can.
Just because they are one drop of the big cohesive mob that is Nigeria. Just because the formula is the same, whether they are torturing a Boko Haram suspect.
Or beating someone on the street of a Nigerian city that scratched the bumper of their patrol vehicle or worse still, wore camouflage shorts.
And when you think this is a ‘lower class’ problem, you look at the legislature whose members take home 7 figures every month.
And Nigerian social media?
In which one opinion,- whether right or wrong,- that does not go in the direction of the bandwagon, gets the full wrath of the mob.
So here’s a toast; to the mob.
To not giving a fuck about the voice of reason. To not tabling arguments intelligently. To a country on autopilot. To prejudice. To not letting other people’s ideas breathe.
More fuel to your kegs, more tyres for the necks.
Burn everything.
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