Thomas Hobbes warned that in the absence of a common power to keep men in check, life descends into a war of all against all – one marked by savagery, cruelty, and unrestrained violence. The events in Uromi last week did not simply test this philosophy; they confirmed it. What unfolded was not justice, not self-defence, not the actions of rational beings responding to a real threat. It was an orgy of lawlessness, a ceremony of brutality, and a testament to the death of conscience in a society that has grown numb to horror.
I watched the videos of that atrocity, and with each frame, my faith in humanity withered. There was not just violence—there was celebration. There was not just death – there was revelry. The sight of men, women, and even young adults cheering as human beings were burned alive did not depict a community responding to crime; it showcased a people fully embracing madness. What was once considered an extreme deviation from human decency has now become normalized. The erosion of empathy is the death knell of a society. When killing is reduced to entertainment, when suffering becomes a spectacle, we must ask ourselves: have we lost our humanity entirely?
The Banality of Evil in Mob Psychology
Hannah Arendt, in her reflections on the nature of evil, observed that true monstrosity does not always appear as an act of grand, orchestrated villainy. Sometimes, it takes the form of ordinary people, operating under collective hysteria, committing acts so grotesque they defy belief. This is the story of Uromi.
The murderers were not demons, nor were they supernatural entities sent to wreak havoc. They were everyday men and women – market traders, motorcyclists, artisans – who, in the heat of collective psychosis, abandoned every shred of human decency. There was no burden of proof, no due process, no room for justice – just fire, fury, and the intoxication of unaccountable power.
The psychology of mob action has been studied for centuries, and one truth remains clear: the mob is not intelligent. It does not think. It reacts. It does not deliberate. It destroys. When a mass of people succumbs to group hysteria, the individual mind dissolves, and in its place emerges a singular entity driven by impulse, by anger, and by the terrifying thrill of dominance. The tragedy of mob psychology is that it erases personal responsibility. Individuals feel shielded by the presence of the group, emboldened to commit acts they would never dare attempt alone. This diffusion of responsibility is the psychological loophole that has justified countless atrocities throughout history.
In Uromi, reason was abandoned at the first whisper of an accusation. Fear was transformed into aggression. Justice was sacrificed for spectacle. The killers did not just act on impulse; they enjoyed it. And that, perhaps, is the most terrifying part. To revel in violence is to reveal a soul untethered from conscience.
The Justifiers and Their Poison
If the people who swung the clubs and threw the tires into the flames are guilty, then those who justified their actions are their accomplices. A strange species of moral rot has infected our society—one that seeks to rationalize the irrational, to explain the inexcusable, and to sanitize horror with phrases like “we must understand why this happened.”
Understand what? That life is cheap? That suspicion alone is enough to warrant execution? That a faceless whisper in the market should be enough to strip a man of his right to life? There is no understanding madness. There is no excusing murder. The same logic that justified the Aluu killings in 2012, the lynching of Deborah in Sokoto, and the execution of Usman Boda has returned in Uromi, cloaked in the same dishonest reasoning.
Every society that has ever descended into anarchy did so because good men found excuses for bad deeds. Evil thrives not just because it is committed, but because it is tolerated. The people of Uromi who did not speak out, who did not try to stop the carnage, who watched and recorded and laughed, are as culpable as those who lit the match. And those who now sit in the comfort of their homes, typing defences for these killers, are laying the groundwork for the next massacre.
In ancient Rome, public executions were a form of entertainment. In medieval Europe, lynchings were spectacles where entire towns would gather to witness suffering. History has shown us what happens when a society becomes desensitized to violence – it breeds more violence. It creates an ecosystem where brutality is normalized, and those who dare to question it are seen as weak. This is the abyss into which we are falling.
The Silent Spectators: A Nation’s Greatest Shame
Perhaps the worst sin is not that of the killers, nor even that of their justifiers, but of the vast majority who will see this horror and do nothing. There will be statements from the government – empty, hollow, devoid of real action. There will be condolences from politicians, from community leaders, from those who benefit from the illusion of order but lack the courage to enforce it. There will be outrage—for a few days. And then, there will be silence.
We have seen this before. The Aluu Four were butchered before the world’s eyes. Their murderers walked free for years; their justifiers still roam among us. Deborah’s charred remains were swept away, and her killers faded into the background. The case of Usman Boda disappeared into bureaucracy, like a whisper swallowed by the wind. And Uromi, too, will pass – unless we, as a people, decide that it will not.
Silence is complicity. Injustice unpunished is justice denied. If the killers of Uromi are not found, if those who cheered are not held accountable, if the security forces do not take a stand against this madness, then we must accept an uncomfortable truth: this will happen again. Not in Uromi, perhaps. But somewhere. And the next victims will not be nameless travellers. They will be our friends, our brothers, our sons, our daughters.
The Road Forward: A Nation’s Reckoning
A society is only as civilized as its ability to protect the innocent from the mob. The tragedy of Uromi is not that people died, but that they died without a voice, without a defense, without a chance. It is that their murder was met with joy, not sorrow. And it is that in the aftermath, there will be no reckoning unless we demand it.
Nigeria must decide what kind of nation it wants to be. One where the law is supreme, or one where the loudest crowd decides who lives and who dies. If the latter prevails, then we are no longer a nation, but a jungle masquerading as one. And the jungle does not care for justice. The jungle only understands survival.
It is easy to forget. It is easy to move on. It is easy to shrug and say, “such is life.” But such should not be life. Such should not be acceptable. The people who were murdered in Uromi last week were human beings. They were fathers, sons, husbands. They had names, they had families waiting for them, they had futures that were stolen by the whims of an unthinking crowd.
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