Burnt alive – The Nation

• Gov. Bello and the APC must fish out and prosecute those who incinerated Salome Abuh

Formally the word barbarism tends to look back in time, to an age of stones and machetes and Dane guns and persons whose faces are coloured with images of scarecrow. It is characterised as an epoch of the savages.

Such presumptions take for granted that human beings are consigned to progress, that the past is always worse than the present. That was not what happened in Kogi State in the course of last week’s polls. It was macabre enough that we saw evidence of mob actions, of hoodlums harassing the weak, of ballot snatching and voter intimidation. Gunshots silenced whole communities and a devilry of thugs instilled fear and trembling.

But one act of fire simplified the primitive weekend. It was what happened to Salome Abuh, the women leader of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State. It was in her home in Ochamadu Ward under the Ofu Local Government Area of Kogi State. She was burned alive.

The painful thing is that her party, to all intents and purposes, was on its way to losing the governorship election between Governor Yahaya Bello of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Musa Wada of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). She was not seen around the ballot boxes or polling station when the tragedy occurred. She thought she was safe in her home. She was not even awake. She was in her bed in the illusion of peace and tranquility. It happened not at night but in broad daylight.

They poured petrol on her building, and watched as it caught fire. There was a sadistic delight in the moment as they knew who was inside. They knew Abuh was in danger. They knew it was a human being. They knew she was going to burn. More tragic, they heard her voice. They heard her cry for help. Her voice was a play and evidence of helplessness. They heard the philter of her cry weaken from heat, and die. They knew she was dying. They knew they could help. They did not help. Their eyes witnessed the silence after she had no more voice to cry, no more defence against the fire. They knew she had died and they left.

They showed no remorse. They did not consider they committed murder. They committed arson. They had, with one act of fire, extinguished a life, a family matriarch, a wife, a human being. For them, it was victory of one party, the APC, over the opponent. They could dispense with human blood for this victory. They did. They won in that fight against Abuh and that was no fight. It was thug action.

They disappeared, so did the life of Abuh. What happened to Abuh was primitive cruelty on a high scale. APC may have won but it must understand that the sort of savagery that took Abuh’s life has no place in a civilised community, and it ought to be investigated.

Governor Bello has kept a criminal silence on this matter, and until he takes decisive steps to hunt down and subject the suspects to the full weight and wrath of the law, the murder of Abuh will haunt him, his party and his government forever.

The excuse being bandied about that it was a revenge attack against the stabbing to death of an APC supporter, a male, does not excuse burning a woman whose helpless cry could not restrain the thugs or call their conscience back from the crypt.

The national secretariat of the APC ought to look into the open shame of barbarity, and rally what is left of the conscience and compassion in this country to justice for a woman, who, whatever her partisan bent, ought not to have died like a hunted rodent.