Two different kinds of horrific racist and religiously motivated murders happened within this month of May 2022 in the United States of America and in the Federal Republic of Nigeria; New York and Sokoto.
The two murders were committed by two set of private individuals who are religious and racists adherents.
In both countries, what happened was murder – horrific hate killing. Simple. But the reactions to the murders by the two presidents of both countries underscore their various levels of commitments or pretentions towards religious or racist intolerance.
The victims in America were eleven Blacks and two Whites; that in Nigeria was a young Christian student.
The murderers believe they are superior to their victims and can justifiably take their lives without any form of consequences.
The murder in Nigeria was on Thursday, May 12, following discussions in a class WhatsApp group at the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto. A young lady had ascribed her success in the examinations to Jesus Christ. Some of her school mates who felt her arguments were blasphemous, went to the city to recruit other young men who invaded the school, seized Miss Deborah Samuel Yakubu, flogged and stoned her and then set her on fire.
Sadly, in Nigeria, there are diversionary debates, some commentaries by senior people in government and in the academics, on whether the perpetrators are justified or not. In America, the nation is united, at least publicly, in outright condemnation for the barbarity of the murders.
Nigeria, despite pretentions at secularity in Section 10 of its Constitution, is practically not a secular state. It is clearly a religious state. Put more aptly, it is an Islamic country, not only by its extant membership of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) but also by the unchallenged fact that many of its federaring units, especially the northern states, have adopted Islam as official religion and source of law and policy – enforcing religious policing and religious legal system – Sharia.
Presidents Biden and Buhari made immediate reactions to the hate crimes, strongly condemning them and sympathising with the victims. But there the similarity ends. Where Biden was categorical that there is no justification for the hate crime, Buhari tried to explain why the murder in Sokoto took place.
No such ambiguity can be associated with the Biden administration in the case of the New York murders. Payton S. Gendron, an 18-year-old White supremacist, wrote an anti-Black manifesto in which he claimed the White population is dwindling in size and being replaced by non-Whites. He then travelled about 200 miles to an area with a 78 per cent Black population. He made some reconnaissance at the Tops Friendly Markets store, Jefferson Avenue, the previous day. Then returned to shoot the victims and livestream the attack. It was a racist crime. Nobody spoke up for him, even when there are racists like him in the political establishment.
He was immediately apprehended. That same evening, according to Buffalo City Court Chief Judge Craig Hannah, Gendron was charged with first-degree murder. Sadly, in Nigeria, the Nigerian government would “investigate” the matter despite the fact that the killing was televised.
Presidents Biden and Buhari made immediate reactions to the hate crimes, strongly condemning them and sympathising with the victims. But there the similarity ends. Where Biden was categorical that there is no justification for the hate crime, Buhari tried to explain why the murder in Sokoto took place.
Buhari said:
“… Muslims all over the world demand respect for the Holy Prophets, including Isah (Alaihissalaam, Jesus Christ) and Muhammad (SAW) but where transgressions occur, as alleged to be the case in this instance, the law does not allow anyone to take matters into their hands.”
This sounds like begging the issue or making a mitigation plea.
Where Americans are free to discuss the hate crime, including its origins, President Buhari, in contrast, directed the Ministries of Information and Culture, Police Affairs and that of Communications and Digital Economy to work with GSM providers and tech companies to “help contain the spread of false and inflammatory information through social media.”
President Buhari also said he was calling for “tempered comments by the media and calm among the general population while investigation is on-going to find out the remote and immediate causes of the incident.”
Contrast these with the clear, unambigious and categorical statement of the American commander-in-chief in which he declared that:
“We still need to learn more about the motivation for today’s shooting as law enforcement does its work, but we don’t need anything else to state a clear moral truth: A racially-motivated hate crime is abhorrent to the very fabric of this nation. Any act of domestic terrorism, including an act perpetrated in the name of a repugnant White nationalist ideology, is antithetical to everything we stand for in America. Hate must have no safe harbour. We must do everything in our power to end hate-fueled domestic terrorism.”
The problem
_Saintmoses Eromosele, based in Ewu, Edo State, is a civil rights activist, software developer and author of the book “The Trials of an Empire”._