Parents, students, and indeed anyone with a conscience is still shocked at the killing of Deborah Yakubu in Sokoto over allegations of blasphemy.
The brutal termination of the life of a promising young Nigerian in a school will again pass with lamentations and condemnations as has become the norm, but most likely, without the consolation that justice would be served.
As we flip over this page and move on, we would most likely overlook the real problem that led to this tragedy. The small cause, the little speck, that has produced a big effect, an explosion and other unintended consequences.
In spite of the curfew imposed by the Sokoto State government, many residents and their properties and businesses – all of which had nothing to do with the alleged blasphemy – were attacked with potential for escalation well beyond the borders of the Caliphate.
All of these troubles derived from annoying indiscretions and abuse of social media platforms. Practically every member of a WhatsApp group must have come across a set of rules crafted by an unknown Samaritan on what to and what not to post in a group chat.
Some groups even evolve their own domesticated set of rules and observances – often applying sanctions where there are breaches. But zealots live on higher sanctimonious precepts. They have their own standards and presume to want to impose salvation by fire by force – the attitude that leads to the invasion of group chats with contents not related to the group’s subject matter.
In further blatant disregard of other members’ sensibilities, there are members who appropriate the chatrooms for their businesses, for religious purposes, for spreading fake news, sensation and even for sharing violent or gruesome content without advising viewer-discretion.
Trivial as this seems, it is so serious that one has witnessed the psychic shock and trauma inflicted on individuals simply by viewing gruesome images or videos carelessly shared in group chats.
Interestingly, the culprits so generous with such disturbing and often inappropriate content are often the least forthcoming with ideas and contributions regarding the objectives of the group.
Deborah Yakubu became the unfortunate victim of challenging such rude infractions and invasion of group chat rooms with unrelated contents. She was hunted down– not by strangers, but by her own compatriots, course-mates and group members for calling them out to do the right thing – or stop doing the wrong things – deliberately.
She can be heard in a voice note telling one of her course-mates that the group was created for academic purposes such as assignments, coursework and not the extraneous subjects they chose to post. If she had resisted the bait of further exchanges with the culprits beyond this point, perhaps tragedy might just have been avoided.
The word in the air is ‘blasphemy’. But the prelude to it is not referenced. The murderers of Deborah were the first to cross a…
Read Full Story At: Sahara Reporters.
