My brother’s keeper

“I am, because we are”. -Ubuntu Philosophy
A Zulu philosophy that explains that a person with ubuntu knows his or her place in the universe and is consequently able to interact gracefully with other individuals. One aspect of ubuntu is that, at all times, the individual effectively represents the people from among whom he or she comes, and therefore tries to behave according to the highest standards and exhibits the virtues upheld by his or her society.
It was because of ubuntu tenants that South Africa was able to proceed and heal the nation in the aftermath  of apartheid. It was a cleansing medium that some say, without it, there could not have been reconciliation between the Whites and the Blacks.

It  could be  what  we  need some  reconciliation.In particular after the the shooting of the young man at LASU last week. The young are are dying at  an  alarming rate and it is not in our culture for the old to be burying the young. The advent of cultism in our halls of learning has reached an horrifying level that something has got to be  done.
It is so easy to look the other way or explain it away  that it is a  just a cult- on- cult turf war. That rebuttal would a cop out and we quietly know that . Damino Damoche  was only 24 years  old, he  had left the lecture halls having completed his banking and finance test paper as he stepped out, he was gunned  down by assassins on motorcycle who, riddled his body with bullets. He laid on the ground,and  he  laid  for several hours  before the police came and  took his body away in a pick-up van.

Damino

Then the social  network sites went on overdrive  with all  sorts  of  commentary; that this up and coming hip hop artist, Olaniyan Damilola, popularly known as “Damino Damoche,” was killed due to his association with campus fraternity at, Lagos State University, LASU. Some said that it was a reprisal from a rival gang because Damoche was alleged to be a member of a confraternity on the campus. His copse laid on the ground while the students gawked and took pictures of his lifeless body and placed the images on the social network sites. Of  course, it is  Nigeria  after all, sights  like  this  has  become common place.
We have become so immune to violent deaths that the young and old have become voyeurs in such a distasteful, tragic twist of daily existence. I am really at a loss that  a  country  like ours regularly exposes our  young to such dangers and ceases to find a meaningful way to arrest this epidemic. This disease is corrosive and the numbers of victims;maimed, dead and  the living have witnessed such violence and deaths is  unimaginable . This denial is equally corrosive because whoever experiences such  scenes  on  a regular  basis,will become  emotional unstable.It will come back to haunt and disturb them. What people see on a daily basis is not normal and it should not be normalised as such.
Life has become two for a penny and it does not seem that our government is acting in a way to stem the flow of violence and senseless deaths. In other countries they would have acted swiftly,carry out exhaustive inquiries,make recommendations  and  implement actions to ensure such tragedy is never repeated.
In my time, fraternity was a social club, a place where young men bond and at most show their rivalry in songs and calibre of the type of academic minds that are members of their fraternity. Whatever scores  they  have  to  settle  never ended in  such loss of lives.It is no longer so. Now fraternity has become a  grooming  ground  for  thugs, murderers,  megalomaniacs  who  seek  to  humiliate, torment  and oppress  young  minds  to  submission  and  worse. These so  called individuals are bullies who have  not learnt  the  simple code of  existence in  a civil  society;  that you  have  to  earn  respect  and that  demanding  respect  does  not  mean  you  are a  big  shot, it  only  means that people are scared and  will  submit to fear.
In  the  UK, the   government  had to act  when statistics indicated a rise in  youth  on  youth  crime  and  a teenager a month was killed and  many  more maimed  and left damaged through  gang violence. Of course, the usual finger of blame was  pointed at the working class and the  minority communities.  With gang culture,it  proliferates and glamorize violence, drugs and crimes. We can ill afford to look the other way; we need to face this abhorrence head on.
In the UK that is what they did. They invested  time  and  money, opened  a  dialogue with  gang members,in  prisons and  in  areas where  they  roam, found  out  what  was  actually  going  on.  They listened to young people, invest in them so  that  the young who  are  in  danger  of  joining  gangs found  a  positive  alternative to  gang  membership.
One of  the  lures  of  the  gang membership  the  young people said was that it  served  as a replacement of  family;that  the  gang takes  care of  one  another; there  is  hierarchy or  command and there  is  punishment for  those  who  disobey  the “laws”.  Home  should  be  where our  children should  learn the  basics of  life,code of behaviour, after all  it  should  be  our  first  school. Gangs would not exist if the membership did not satisfy, albeit in very anti-social and destructive ways.
We  should  instead,create a  place  for young people to  feel  protected,nurture  a sense of empowerment and  positive group membership, mentoring and employment.  Let me assure you , that there is  no type , it is not just some youths who are most at risk — the  net  is  bigger ; it is those marginalized by discrimination based on class, poverty, discrimination,education, tribe and religion.