A video making the rounds online shows a young man who was caught stealing an iron protector, a metal guard fixed on windows and doors to stop burglars. In the video, the man is made to carry the stolen item on his head while a crowd gathers around him. The people keep asking him, “wetin you steal” (what did you steal), and he answers, “protector.” They order him to dance. Each time his dancing does not please them, they beat him.
Why This Is Not a Joke
Many people who share videos like this see them as funny. But look closely at what is really happening. A group of ordinary people caught a man, held him, made him dance for their amusement, and beat him whenever they felt like it. He has not seen a judge. He has not been proven guilty in court. This is called jungle justice — when a crowd decides to punish someone on the spot, without police and without a fair trial.
This Has Happened Before
This is not the first time something like this has happened in Nigeria, and past cases show how quickly this kind of “punishment” can turn deadly.
The most well-known case remains the killing of the “Aluu Four” on October 5, 2012. Four University of Port Harcourt students were falsely accused of theft in Aluu, Rivers State. A mob stripped them, tortured them, and burned them alive, and a video of the killing shocked the country. More recently, in March 2025, a mob in Uromi, Edo State, killed 16 travellers from northern Nigeria after wrongly believing they were kidnappers, an incident President Bola Tinubu publicly condemned.
Amnesty International documented at least 555 cases of mob violence across Nigeria between 2012 and 2024, resulting in at least 57 deaths in the cases reviewed, including people burned alive, buried alive, and tortured to death. A separate Daily Trust investigation found that at least 158 Nigerians died from jungle justice in just an 18-month period. These numbers show that videos which start as “just dancing” or public humiliation belong to a pattern that, in many documented cases, has already ended in someone’s death.
Why People Do This
People do not trust the police. Many Nigerians feel that reporting a thief to the police will not lead to any real punishment, so they decide to punish the person themselves.
Social media rewards it. Videos like this get many views and shares. This can push people to record and even make the humiliation worse, just for online attention.
Crowds behave differently. When people act as a group, they often do things they would never do alone, because no single person feels fully responsible.
No one is punished for the beating. The people who beat the suspect almost never face any consequences, even though beating someone is a crime too.
What This Costs Us
The suspect, whether guilty or not, never gets a chance to explain himself. He can be badly hurt, and in worse cases, killed. And when people keep sharing and laughing at videos like this, it makes mob violence feel normal instead of criminal.
A Better Way Forward
Hand suspects over to the police right away instead of punishing them on the spot.
Train local vigilante and security groups on how to arrest suspects without violence.
Stop treating these videos as entertainment. Speak up about how wrong they are when you see them shared.
Police and courts should act faster and more visibly on theft cases, so people trust the system more.
More public awareness is needed on how dangerous and illegal jungle justice really is.
My Thoughts
I understand why people get angry at thieves. But forcing a man to dance with a stolen item on his head, then beating him when the crowd is not satisfied, is not justice. It is mob violence dressed up as entertainment. Even if he really did steal, he still deserves to be handed to the police, not assaulted for people’s amusement. What worries me most is how normal this has become. People record, laugh, and share, without asking what happens the day the mob gets it wrong, or the day the “dance” ends in death. Nigeria has already seen that happen before. We should not need another tragedy to start treating this as the crime it is.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
