A video surfaced showing the four children of the Kaduna teacher, the poor Ummulkhair, who was lynched and burned to death after a false accusation. It is not the kind of video one watches, at least not if you want to pretend you never saw reality and keep your peace of mind intact. Yet the news reporter narrated it with a tone of brutal realism, with truth and fact we cannot undo, reminding the nation and its citizens that a single tragedy of a woman falsely accused of trying to steal a child, then descended upon by a mob mobilized by outrage, near and far, with the distress call “thief, thief, thief” is one that will alter the plight of those children forever. In essence, the tragedy invites tears, pain, frustration, mystery, and a sadness that lingers long after the tears dry.
Still, the thought that this could happen again, maybe not exactly the same way, but through the same trigger of emotional reaction and knee-jerk action parading as rationality, is what should concern us most.
By this, I mean no man should pray to encounter a malicious woman in a car, on social media, or in a commercial vehicle who shouts “sexual harassment.” That is akin to pronouncing a death sentence on an innocent man. The problem is that over 90 percent of people nearby are likely to believe her instantly, begin to hit him, and before you know it the information races outward, mutating as it travels to those far away. It becomes rumor with new subjects: they caught a thief, they caught a man with another man’s wife, they just arrested a kidnapper, a ritualist trying to charm a woman. Confusion erupts and truth becomes the first casualty. Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments and Gustave Le Bon’s crowd psychology both warn us that in heightened arousal, individuals surrender judgment to the mob. Once the label sticks, due process dies.
I have known people who, because of this, refuse to even engage married women in conversation, let alone interact with them for anything legitimate. Because suspicion or emotional judgment in a world that feeds more on appearance, sign, and look than on substance can make anyone vulnerable by chance, and every charge or trace becomes a tool for indictment or malice. As sociologist Erving Goffman noted in Stigma, a single accusation can spoil identity. The accused is no longer a person but a category: thief, rapist, blasphemer.
A professor once shared a story with us. He was late in Kano and looking for a hotel. He saw some children playing and asked if anyone could direct him. Then an elderly man asked the children, in Hausa, what they were doing with the stranger. The children quickly said he was asking for gidan karuwai, meaning the house of prostitutes. Thank God he understood Hausa and interrupted. He was emphasizing how communication, cultural shock, and mistranslation can twist innocence into blasphemy and make people vulnerable. Cross-cultural studies by communication scholar Stella Ting-Toomey on face-negotiation theory show that in high-context cultures, misread cues escalate fast because saving face overrides fact-finding.
Most people walking in hospitals, especially male doctors and nurses, are vulnerable to this. If a doctor tells a married woman to uncover for a medical examination, the shock and emotional reaction can be explosive. Most people would believe her if she alleged sexual harassment. Research findings published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, indicate that 68% of male healthcare workers report anxiety about false accusations during intimate exams, and defensive medicine rises as trust falls.
Even real criminals have learned from it. If you shout “thief, thief” as they run for safety, they too will shout “thief, thief,” and confusion is created. Those who look guilty based on subjective conclusion or perception become victims of mob lynching. So how is this serving us? René Girard’s theory of the scapegoat explains it: communities discharge accumulated tension onto a single victim, and the cry of “thief” is the modern ritual that sanctifies the violence.
Poor Ummulkhair only wanted help to find her way. She was accused of attempting to steal a child and was at once burned to ashes, without reservation or even a pause to play it safe. Who does this to us?
Why the haste to take the path of a costly mistake that cannot be reversed or corrected, driven by wild emotion?
I just saw the faces of suspects arrested for the jungle justice, about four women and close to 100 boys. I cannot stop thinking why this Gen Z youth believe they can do anything and go free. One day, a commenter on social media criticizing the government said people are killing freely at will without consequence. I told him nobody should try it, because that is when you realize we are just being emotional or exaggerating. Data from the Nigerian Human Rights Commission shows that fewer than 5% of mob action cases result in prosecution, creating what criminologists call “impunity contagion.”
Next time, if you hear “thief, thief, thief,” while it is fair to act as humanity deserves, it should not be the haste of killing another or quickly using a dangerous object to hit based on mere charges. The question that should always whisper is: how much do I know?
Yet there are many charges that make people instantly emotional. Social media amplifies them: people faking rape charges, staging their own kidnapping, claiming terminal illness like cancer for crowdfunding. These come from genders and places least expected, capable of heinous intentions even in high offices. It forces us to ask how often such distress calls happen around us to mislead us. Behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman’s work on System 1 thinking reminds us that we are wired for fast, emotional judgment. Mobs outsource that wiring to the loudest voice.
Do not be a thief or a victim of the thief you want to kill. The suspects who killed poor Ummulkhair are currently cooling their heads in detention, mostly boys with parents, and ladies with children, with people who care for them. Their lives will not be the same forever because of that misstep.
Bagudu can be reached via bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com or 07034943575.
