On November 19, 2021, life suddenly took an ugly turn for Anthony Okpahefufe, a 16-year-old, living with his grandmother in Cross River State.
On that day, life was snuffed out of the senior secondary school student in the most brutish manner by an irate mob in Alifokpe Yache, an agrarian community in the Yala Local Government Area of the state.
Like bloodthirsty vampires, the assailants, mostly youths, bayed for the blood of Okpahefufe, whose only crime was being friends to two teenagers that allegedly robbed a grocery store on a local market day known as Ogidi.
Innocently killed by an angry mob
His mother, Pauline said on that ill-fated day, she got an alarming call from her mother around 6.30pm, that an angry mob stormed the compound, overpowered her and dragged Okpahefufe away.
She revealed that her mother was beaten and stripped naked by the youth as they tried to take away the frightened teenager. Pauline said the old woman ran after them and watched helplessly as they brutalised and later set her grandson ablaze.
She told a Punch newspaper correspondent that it was at the village square that her mother learnt about the robbery.
Pauline said her son was not present at the scene of the robbery but claimed that the youth, allegedly led by the store owner, (name witheld) insisted on having him killed because the alleged thieves were his friends.
She said, “My mother told me that they passed a rod through his anus and burnt him alive with the other two. He was not given the chance to explain himself. My mother became hypertensive after seeing how they killed her grandson. She is traumatised. It is only God that is keeping her alive.”
Punch Investigations reveal that after the killing, the youth denied family members access to Okpahefufe’s remains and allegedly went ahead to bury them in a primary school.
Mother cries for justice
Pauline’s experience is not one any mother would ever wish for. It took quite an effort for her to narrate the events that led to the gruesome killing of a son she described as an embodiment of talent.
She said the loss of Okpahefufe brought with it a crippling sense of loneliness and misery of insomnia.
“He was quiet and had great plans for me. He was an obedient son and ensured that my mother never lifted a cup without his assistance. Anthony was studying hard to take his final secondary school examination,” she said in a raspy voice.
Pauline painstakingly recalled the raw details of his murder as recounted by her aged mother, whom the teenager lived with from age five. The grieving mother told our Punch newspaper that her son’s father, Anthony, whom he was named after, died when she was six months pregnant.
She recalled suffering throughout the pregnancy and being abandoned by everyone, including Anthony’s family members. Pauline said as soon as her son turned five, she took the most difficult decision to leave him in her mother’s care and relocated to Lagos, to get a job to fend for them.
“Life in the village was hard, so I had to leave for Lagos. My mother struggled to take care of us. The pain of losing my son is too much to bear. My heart is shattered. I suffered to have Anthony. No one helped me. All the elders in the village and his father’s family members abandoned me. Now, they have killed him because he didn’t have anyone to fight for him,” she said, shuddering with sobs.
Jungle justice in Nigeria
The prevalence of “instant justice” as a form of punishment for criminal suspects seems to have increased in Nigeria with a lot of cases not reported by the media.
Many Nigerians have resorted to taking the law into their own hands and, often, the victims are innocent citizens.
All it takes, in most instances, is for an individual to raise the alarm about theft, kidnap attempt or any other crime and a crowd, which balloons with time, would beat the accused to stupor and set the person ablaze.
Mr Ilori, a criminologist, said the scourge can be stopped if the police are responsive enough to crime alert and they ensure that the opportunity to carry out crimes becomes very difficult for offenders.
“There is a need for institutional trust in the police and the judiciary. There should be a free and fair trial of the accused and quick dispensation of justice by the judiciary."
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