So I want to talk about something that’s bothered me since I read about it. It’s about the 13yo boy in Kano sentenced to 10yrs in prison for blasphemy.
Like a lot of us, I read it and it saddened me, but i was determined to unlook. There’s so much in this country to get one down, and in a lot of instances we have to choose between the paralysis of helpless despair and the stoicism of propelling onwards with our lives.
However, the larger systemic things that militate against us as Nigerians manifest themselves also in small ways. Indeed, the endless killings in different parts of the country and the ease with which we condemn young lives to death or cruel sentences are one and the same.
The God that many of us profess to worship is allegedly a God of Mercy. The word “mercy” appears no less than 113 times in the Quran because 113/114 of the chapters begin with a pronouncement of God’s mercy. We, however, made in his image, do not mirror this quality. Why is that?
Even Islamic jurisprudence recognizes mercy, and the role it plays in achieving justice. If a state government has decided that its stands in the word of God to proclaim a child guilty and ultimately ruin his life, then it has chosen religious adherence over the mercy of God.
It is not an accident that we are a country where life has become so cheap to claim, for herdsmen and terrorists and even police alike. This is the link between economic injustices of mass poverty and the fire that has long been set to our values and morality.
The @AuschwitzMuseum Director wrote to @MBuhari offering to serve this young boy’s sentence. We have somehow been so inured to how cheap Nigerian lives have become that this story did not make most of us bat an eyelid. It has freed our govts to make our lives even cheaper.
And our lives will only get cheaper.
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