Kolade Johnson: Smoking The Furs Off Their Skins -By Festus Adedayo

Last week, as if I was sure that the trend would become more notorious, I spoke about some of our brothers in service uniforms, equipped with guns, who were giving voice to Polish-Britishnovelist, Joseph Conrad’s sweeping categorization of Africans as savages and our continent, the heart of darkness. Last Sunday, another Conrad synecdoche leapt up our consciousness again, using self to represent the whole. At the Onipetesi area of Lagos State, while men of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad operatives of the Lagos State Police Command were said to be combing the city for outlaws, they reportedly noticed a young man who wore dreadlocks who, in their very narrow minds, must, ipso facto be a criminal and in the process of his pursuit, shot dead another young man,Kolade Johnson, said to be the only son of his parents.

Yes, President Muhammadu Buhari, the Inspector General of Police and so many others have deplored this murder most foul, but the fact remains that, unless there is a concerted effort by the system to purge it of the likes of the blood-thirsty cop who, unprovoked, snuffed life out of this young man, we will continue to live with and among savages who periodically go backwards to act like our ape ancestors. A thousand and one of these Conrad testimonies abound in the country, among uniform-wearing personnel and even among ordinary folks who walk the streets. How do we purge our clime of some of us who take delight in acting like animals? How do we ensure that whenever creations like this, deaf to rules of engagement among civilized human beings, indicate their desire to recreate furs on their skins, there is an appropriate system that smokes the furs off them with scalding fire, with painful individual consequences?