A crowd made up of people old enough to be his father have burnt alive a young boy of seven years in one of the most astonishing act of barbarism ever carried out in any part of the world.

The incidence took place this
morning in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. The 7 year old was accused of stealing. There was no trial not to talk of conviction.

Stones were hauled at him. A stream of blood flow from his head and mouth. The callous crowd was not done. They put a used tire on him and set him on fire.

Nearby, a police man watched helplessly even as the barbaric crowd hailed and jeered. Though, there were a few emphatic individuals that sought for mercy but that became a fleeting illusion.

“The boy stole. He was caught and the angry crowd set him on fire”, an eye witness told Irohinoodua today.

The witness said he was shocked that at least one uniformed policeman watched the incidence without making any effort to stop the crowd or at least call for reinforcement.

“This is callous. It is wicked and inhuman”, Mr Mathew Olorunhan, whose house is not far from the scene of the bizarre incidence told Irohinoodua.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Human Rights Community, (NHRC) has asked the Lagos State Governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode to investigate the matter and bring the perpetrators to full justice.

“If this had happened in Ghana, the whole country will morn. We want to see how elected leaders will respond to this grim images of the little boy,”Olorunhan said.

“Lagos must not tolerate the height of animal instinct. How can a 7 year old boy be burnt to death by a mad crowd? It is no longer the boy that is a criminal, but the animals that set him ablaze. At 7 years, a child is not in control of his world. He does not even know what committing crime is.

We cannot talk of building a city that is respected by the local and international community when a 7 year old is set ablaze my a set of idiots.

The governor must stem the slide into anarchy in the state”, the NHRC Lagos State Coordinator, Mrs Wuraola Akinwunmi told Irohinoodua.

She said the present governor Ambode has been doing a lot to make Lagos a city of beauty where honour rules.

“But there have been instances of cult violence and killings which now put the state on a red light alert of danger and barbarism.’

Source: modernghana.com