Prince Jeffrey Alex: The callous extinguishing of a 22 year old student

Since news broke about the callous murder of a 22-year-old student at Ajayi Crowther University, Oyo, I have been ill at ease. A 22-year-old accused of stealing a phone is beaten for eight hours by his schoolmates. Schoolmates who became accusers, judges, juries, and executors? It boggles the mind.

I have sat sleepless for the last twenty-four hours pondering how this tragedy came upon us as a nation. How did this become our educational institutions, and how do children in their twenties descend to such bestiality? I shudder to think about the entire event.

So, a group of students took the law into their own hands, beat up a fellow student on allegations of theft, and literally killed him. No one handed him over to security. No one called the police. Instead, they took him into a room and meted jungle justice on him after forcefully shaving his head.

I have played the events leading to his death over and over in my head. This young man was not kidnapped. He did not die at the hands of criminals or bandits. He died at the hands of his schoolmates. People he knew. People he shared bread with. People he may have partied with, some of whom he considered his friends.

It is the empty and sad feeling one gets when one finds out that someone you thought you knew had bad-mouthed you at a place where it was possible to destroy you. That feeling of betrayal—of grief, disbelief, and sadness—that envelopes one for days is nothing compared to what this young student went through.

The beating until he could no longer feel pain, the humiliation, the disbelief. Beyond the alleged perpetrators, to whom we shall return shortly, what about the onlookers? The Internet, social media, and television have suddenly turned us all into monsters whose only interest is creating content, no matter how horrific that content is. To gain more ‘likes’ is more important than calling for help. It is sad that the young student may have been saved if only one student had reported the incident. Eight hours is a long time.

And then there were the many questions. Who started the accusation? Who struck him first? Whose room was he taken to? Who ordered the mob’s action? What did he say when all of this was going on? And of course, the set of young people we are bringing up, whose interest is not whether someone lives or dies but how popular they are, In their numbers, they beat up a defenceless young man and left him in the room to die.

What were the thoughts of young Jeffrey as he lay down, dying at the hands of his schoolmates, his friends, and his parents? He is the only son of his mother, her joy, and, as they say in Nigerian parlance, her eyes, her hope. No one should ever be placed in the place where Jeffrey’s mother has found herself. Without her only son—because a group of self-righteous young men chose to show off their happening prowess by killing her son in a manner that reduced them all to lower animals.

Something has broken in our community if students are capable of this beastly act that sets everyone wondering about our parenting and our collective humanity. I shudder to think what words of pain and hurt were hurled at the young Jeffrey as they snuffed life out of him, debased him, undignified him, and set him up for a painful, slow death. So after this, how will his murderers sleep? How would their lives end?

Nigeria’s self-righteous, ill-bred brats are coming to the fore and manifesting in different ways. The torture and murder of a fellow human being is not normal. To what end is Jeffrey’s death?