A video of a military officer being lynched by residents of the Upper Denkyira West District of the Central region of Accra, Ghana has surfaced on the Internet. The office, Captain Maxwell Mahama, was with the 5th Infantry Battalion (5BN) at Burma Camp in Accra but on detachment duties at Diaso in the aforementioned region. He was lynched on the suspicions that he was an armed robber.
This gruesome video showing youths and women mercilessly dealing head blows with cement blocks and other heavy objects on the helpless officer is a painful reminder of the failure of the justice system, an ineffective police force and a loss of humaneness across Africa.
Online reports state that Captain Mahama was lynched by irate youths of the community who spotted a pistol on him after he stopped to ask for directions. They assumed he was one of those robbers constantly terrorising the area.
Several pleas by the security officer to the effect that he was not a criminal yielded no result. Officer Mahama died, leaving behind a wife and two very young children.
This incidence tells of a very deep issue bedevilling the African continent.
First, there is a barbaric taste for blood and violence in Africa. Africa has transformed itself into a continent that wantonly spills the blood of its own for the flimsiest of reasons. A simple family disagreement is resolved with blows and daggers. An accusation of theft is met with mob justice.
Security agencies also go the way of violence to settle disagreements among themselves. A recent example is a case of angry naval officers burning three policemen alive in Calabar, Nigeria.
The violence is beyond politics, neither is it just crime. People in the continent are angry and are taking it out on each other.
According to a New York Behavioural Health post, anger can alert you that an injustice is being committed, or that someone is taking advantage of you. On a larger scale, it may lead to groups of people to organise and motivate them to take action in favour of social change.
While it is normal to be angry over failed government policies, reduced standard of living and the prevalence of crime, it should not result in killing. And this type of anger when found should not be ignored.
This calls for radical re-orientation that will drive peaceful resolution of conflicts across all levels. For a religious continent, the message should start from the churches and mosques.
Mahama’s killing shows that there is need to teach Africans how to control the excess anger from which mob justice stem from. This should also open the door for the institutionalisation of anger management across all levels of society.
These ushers in the second point about the issue of justice delivery and policing needs which need to be given prime attention in Africa.
A lynching that starts and ends without the police arriving at the scene to disrupt it, shows a police force that is distant from those it is meant to protect. There’s cause for alarm if residents say they have consistently been robbed and there’s no assurance from the police that such will be curtailed and perpetrators brought to book.
If this is a dereliction of duty by the police, either by omission or commission it needs to stop. For a continent that has a high prevalence of crime, there should be no holding back on funding the police. This will translate to more personnel, more spread of police stations in rural and urban areas and more motivation for officers. If crime is nipped in the bud, jungle justice will not occur.
The courts who should work with the police to ensure diligent prosecution, owe it to the people to deal decisively with cases of robbery, kidnapping and other heinous crimes that serve as triggers for mob justice.
The system should be effective in fishing out perpetrators of mob justice also. Mahama’s death will provoke another round of discussion that will die once the story is out of the news cycle. Until the next one happens. But this incidence should generate a continuous cycle of conversation on the dangers of mob justice because we cannot tell who will be its next victim. It doesn’t matter if you are guilty or innocent.
