-By Abdul Mahmud
The American-English poet, T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is, on its face, a play about the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Beneath its religious setting, however, it is a profound meditation on power, authority and the moral corrosion that occurs when political office comes to regard itself as standing above the law. King Henry II never explicitly ordered Becket’s murder. His famous lament, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”, was enough to embolden four knights who interpreted royal displeasure as royal licence. The tragedy, therefore, was not merely the killing of a churchman. It was the collapse of the boundary between power and accountability.
Nigeria has no Canterbury Cathedral; but it has castles of the nouveau riche, country homes, ministers’ residences, government guesthouses, and official quarters. It has, too, a Constitution that promises equality before the law. Even so, recent events surrounding the death of 26-year-old physiotherapist, Mary Habila, at the country home of the Minister of Works, David Umahi, compel an uncomfortable question: If a young woman dies in the residence of one of the country’s most powerful ministers, why does the law appear to proceed with extraordinary caution, when in every other circumstance it would move with ruthless speed?
It bears repeating that there is, at the time of writing, no public report that the Minister himself was present when the death occurred. There has been no official allegation that he committed any crime. These facts matter and ought to be stated without equivocation. Though the point here is not to presume guilt where none has been established, the point nonetheless is to ask why the ordinary instincts of Nigerian law enforcement seem to operate differently whenever political power occupies the same address as tragedy.
The contrast is impossible to ignore.
In countless criminal investigations across Nigeria, particularly those involving ordinary citizens, the police often arrest virtually everyone present at the scene of an unexplained death. Family members, neighbours, domestic staff and visitors frequently find themselves detained while investigators attempt to establish what transpired. The practice has attracted sustained criticism from lawyers and human rights advocates, but it remains commonplace. Presence alone often becomes sufficient reason for arrest. But, not when the deceased is poor, and proximity to death belongs to the politically connected, anonymity invites severity for the former while caution suddenly becomes a constitutional virtue in the latter. This selective elasticity in the application of criminal investigation diminishes public confidence far more effectively than any courtroom acquittal ever could. Justice loses its legitimacy not merely when the innocent are punished, but when the powerful appear insulated from the inconveniences routinely imposed upon everyone else.
The memory of the raid on Sunday Igboho’s residence remains instructive. Security operatives descended on the house in an operation whose legality remains the subject of intense controversy. People died. At least, according to the number of deaths the SSS itself acknowledged. Igboho’s supporters put the figure much higher. Property was also destroyed. In one of the most surreal details of that operation, even the household cat was reportedly shot dead. The image endured because it came to symbolise the indiscriminate reach of state power: a demonstration that when the Nigerian state decides to deploy force, nothing within its target appears beyond its grasp. The cat became, unintentionally, a metaphor for the ferocity with which the coercive powers of the state can be exercised against those it chooses to pursue.
Today the country confronts the unexplained death of a young woman within the premises associated with a serving minister, and the machinery of the state appears to have shifted into an altogether different gear. Where once even a cat did not escape the violence of a state operation, now there appears to be extraordinary restraint in circumstances where Nigerians would ordinarily expect investigators to secure everyone present for questioning while establishing the facts. This is not to suggest that anyone should be arrested arbitrarily or presumed guilty. It is to ask why the standards routinely applied to ordinary Nigerians appear to become negotiable when public power occupies the same address as public tragedy. Eliot understood this moral asymmetry. Murder in the Cathedral is ultimately about the atmosphere created by power rather than the mechanics of homicide. The King’s authority generated a climate in which some lives became expendable and some questions became dangerous. The knights who killed Becket did not believe themselves criminals. They believed themselves servants of necessity. Henry II did not wield the sword, but the moral burden of power hung over the Cathedral long before blood stained its floor.
Modern democracies are not threatened only by overt tyranny, they are equally endangered by the quiet normalisation of unequal accountability. Institutions need not announce that ministers occupy a privileged legal category, they merely need to investigate them differently. That difference is sharper and not difficult to be noticed, even where the law derives its authority not from the magnificence of statutes but from the consistency of their application. Every unexplained deviation weakens the invisible covenant between citizens and the state. Nigerians have become accustomed to seeing handcuffs produced with astonishing speed for activists, artisans, drivers and market women. They therefore struggle to understand why those same institutions become hesitant whenever official residences enter the frame.
The issue extends beyond one minister or one tragic death; it concerns the constitutional meaning of public office itself. Does political power confer additional scrutiny because it carries public trust, or does it confer practical immunity because it commands institutional deference? A constitutional democracy can survive many scandals. What it cannot survive indefinitely is the perception that criminal procedure itself has become class-conscious. The death of Mary Habila deserves a thorough, transparent and independent investigation. Such an investigation protects not only her memory but also the reputation of every person whose name has become associated with the tragedy. Truth serves both the innocent and the guilty in a manner that clears one and convicts the other. Silence accomplishes neither.
Eliot’s Becket understood that institutions perish long before buildings collapse. Cathedrals fall first in the conscience. Democracies suffer the same fate, not when constitutions are amended; but when citizens conclude that justice has acquired two entrances: one for the powerful and another for everyone else. If the law cannot enter a minister’s house with the same confidence that it enters the home of an ordinary Nigerian, then the real victim is not merely the deceased. It is the Republic itself. And if even a cat could not escape the uncompromising force of the state in one home, while the law treads gingerly in another because power resides there, then the Republic has not only wandered dangerously close to Eliot’s Canterbury, it has occupied it.
Hear: the greatest threat to justice is not simply murder, but the deference that power demands before the truth can be told.