If there are any doubts that Nigeria is a country in which horror walks on four legs, and life has no value at all, the latest report of 18 male corpses found floating in Ezu River in the border between Enugu and Anambra States, last Saturday, should lay those doubts to rest.
The discovery of the corpses by fishermen in the part of the river at Amansea, in Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra State, is many notches higher the regular horror stories emerging from different parts of the country.
This is not like the case of four young students killed by a baying mob that joined the list of atrocities in Nigeria, last year. It is different from the case of a young woman who simply went to the house of her married lover and strangled his four children to death, that was reported on the20th of January.
This is not the case of the Apo Six – five young traders and a lady – killed by policemen, who are yet to be brought to book in Abuja. It is not Boko Haram planting bombs in churches and reaping a grim harvest of deaths.
The case of the floating corpses in a river in Anambra State is not our regular Nigerian fare of horror stories whose perpetrators are often very well known, and the motives quite clear.
This is a dastardly situation in which 18 corpses simply floated out of a river that serves as source of water to some people in that part of the country. Who dunnit? (Pardon me). Who killed these people whose corpses were found floating in the river? Who, exactly, are these dead persons? Where, how and when were they dumped in the river?
This, indeed, is a horror story of no mean dimension. It is a story of reality reading far stranger than fiction! This latest tragic story out of Nigeria reminds me of the case of the headless body of a young Nigerian boy that was found floating, I think, in London’s River Thames, some years ago. The London Metropolitan Police turned Britain upside down trying to determine the person responsible for such dastardly act.
The police authorities in that country spared no efforts at all. Police investigators were sent down to Nigeria and they were able to establish that the boy hailed from the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, somewhere, if my memory serves me right, around Edo State. This, they arrived at following traces of some rocks in that part of the country in his bones, or something like that. The people behind the despicable act were determined, arrested, prosecuted, and jailed.
In this case of the floating corpses in Eku River, Nigeria needs nothing less than the seriousness, commitment and tenacity displayed by the London Police to bring the killers of the little Nigerian boy, who, I think, was nicknamed “Boy Adam” to justice. This is not one case in which official pussyfooting or dilly-dallying should be employed until it is forgotten.
This should not be a Farouk Lawan scandal in which a member of the House of Representatives who confessed to collecting hundreds of thousand of dollars from oil magnate, Femi Otedola, could neither be made to cough out the money, nor punished in any way for taking the entire country for a fool, all because the House is not interested in bringing one of its own to justice.
This should not be handled like the Oteh – Hembe scandal, either. The Ezu River corps.
Read Today’s daily Times and there and through the caption below. it Happened in Kwara State. A State that is made up of Hausa and Yorubas (bannza bokor)
3 in court for beheading 3-year-old girl