Naira Marley and a national dilemma

Fame and controversy are part of the lifestyle of most musicians. The list is endless, from Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, to Lady Gaga and the rest of them. The Nigerian musician, Naira Marley, had sometimes been in the news in controversial situations and the latest happened over a year ago following the death of another young Nigerian musician. Exactly how that unfortunate incident happened isn’t my focus. My focus is what has since transpired and the response of some Nigerians. The moment it happened judgment was passed and the killer was declared especially online before the police conducted the investigation, a situation I spoke against at the time. An occurrence makes me return to the matter here.

 I think the judgment some Nigerians pass before the police release any report is a sign of a serious national malaise which we shouldn’t overlook. Ever since Marley the musician was mentioned as a culprit by content creators eager to attract traffic, other angles had emerged. The police accused Marley and some of his guys of cyberbullying the younger musician who died. Note that even this has to be proved in court first.  Aside what the police said, I have not seen any other report linking Marley to the death of the younger musician. Rather, some respected investigative journalists have taken their time to conduct their investigations which they report online. One looked at the immediate causes of the death and pointed in a totally different direction, not Marley’s.

 Now, what I state here isn’t in defence of Marley or anyone linked to him. I am only expressing my concern about how easy it has become to mislead Nigerians, how easy it has become for Nigerians to believe falsehoods, and how I think this is a major dilemma which dire consequences none of us can imagine. The dilemma here is more worrisome when it is noted that many with high levels of education fall into the trap, and many of them add to the problem.  I followed the story and read those who came online to “break news” of how the death of the young musician happened. For me, some dots didn’t fit in. For instance, part of the story was that an injection was administered on the victim and he lost consciousness from that point.  Yet his death was directly placed at the footsteps of a person who wasn’t shown to be anywhere near the scene of the attack?

 Online, it was rare to find anyone who sounded a note of caution regarding this matter. I stated at the time that a herd approach of ‘we-know-the-killer’, based on claims made by those not authorised to make them, didn’t appear reasonable to me. We were all emotional, but as the Yoruba say, even when we cry we still see. Many lose their heads online too often over issues. Where is the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”? Where is the place of facts, not assumptions? My concern is ever the educated ones who should know better.  Many of them became intoxicated with the cloud of emotion covering the crowd and they condemned freely.
 At the time, one opposition politician from Lagos known for being the ‘babaasale’ of everything opposition online wrote that on behalf of himself and his family members, he dissociated himself from Marley. With all his education, he already knew the killer from hearsay and unproven accusations.  This disposition regularly brings the fool out of many these days. They follow the tide of the crowd online in their attempt to cash in on strong emotion, take sides in an issue, and when later they’re proven to be wrong they simply move on as though nothing has happened. No apologies to anyone. They start another round of discourse and some engage them, a situation which shows that here’s a crowd led only by their emotion; nothing concerns them about doing some critical thinking, nothing about thinking things through. I blame this on how most kids are raised, the kind of education we offer where people pass through schools but schools don’t pass through them.
 Examples of the situations I describe are so many online that I exercise great restraint not to use some words while commenting on what I see. Some don’t exercise similar restraints though; they tell those who run with senseless news items without any critical thinking that they sound “stupid” and that they’ve put “foolery” on display. Those are the kind of people who may yet wangle their way into positions and one wonders how a nation can cope under the burden.  Lately, Marley made a post where he said he didn’t do anything wrong so nothing wrong would happen to him. Despite what investigative journalists have said, the accusation of cyber-bullying that the police accuse Marley and his associates of, and the report of the police on the cause of death that has yet to be fully released, some still accuse Marley of being responsible for the murder.

 However, while replying to Marley’s tweet on that occasion one person, (@_batoofficial, apologised for what she called false accusations, writing thus: “On behalf of all Nigerians and those in diaspora, Dear Naira Maley and associates (marlians), We’re writing to offer our sincerest apologies for laying false accusations on you and your team…Our mistakes have caused you undue stress, and for that, we are truly sorry.”  She should have apologised for only herself and left other Nigerians to do theirs. Many won’t, there is a long thread of similar behaviour.  When some know they’re wrong they stick to their story line. It’s like some who lost the 2023 presidential election but claimed it was rigged. Even when their candidate admitted he lost the election, which all sensible observers knew he never stood a chance of winning, his followers continued to make the same claims.
Rather than turn back, this same group continued to do all it could to discredit the person of the winner, President Bola Tinubu. They spread the news that no one knew where Asiwaju came from or the primary school he attended. As senseless as this sounds some believe it and spread it online.  After one of  Asiwaju’s former classmates posted their picture together in primary school, the group moved on to say that Asiwaju didn’t attend a university in the US. Even though Asiwaju worked with multinational corporations, their followers believed the falsehood even after the university presented evidence. Later, the same group claimed that every public figure had a picture of their younger years in the public space, but Asiwaju’s picture as a young man had never been seen. These are pictures anyone can google and find online. Yet some believed the falsehood and spread it. Soon someone posted a picture of a much younger Asiwaju and sarcastically suggested that maybe Asiwaju wasn’t born but came down from heaven.

 The group continued to run with the claim that Asiwaju had no family members. At this point, someone asked one of the guys spreading it: “Isn’t it stupid of you to believe he (Asiwaju) doesn’t have family members…?”  But these are the kinds of things some educated Nigerians believe and are spreading. With this, what would the reader think of some category of people we’re raising in this nation? The dilemma extends further afield. There was a time a content creator claimed online that the son of the Borno State governor killed someone in Saudi Arabia and he had been arrested. It attracted traffic.

 It turned out that the young man in question was in Nigeria. A video of him was made denying the allegation, yet some praised the content creator who made the false allegation. They said the governor’s son must have been a disreputable fellow, otherwise such a false claim wouldn’t have been made about him. Talk about thin lines between sanity and insanity. It’s a malaise, and a serious one here when we consider that those who can write some good English are the ones reasoning in this manner. I mean, where do we leave the matter of the sanctity of truth and the need to be on the side of truth? In a country where even those who’re educated care nothing about the sanctity of truth, there’s a national dilemma deserving serious attention