For those who intend to literally or metaphorically follow President Muhammadu Buhari’s “shoot ballot box snatchers” order, quality education is a good thing.
It was in Prof Joseph Omoroge’s Ethics class at the University of Lagos (particularly during the debates on Ethics vs Morality), that I fell in love with philosophy.
An analogy he often cited during the usually heated debates was that of the validity of “superior orders” or “lawful orders”, used as a defence by the accused in the post-WWII Nuremberg trials of 1945 to 1946.
In its uniquely twisted ideology, the National Socialist Party of Germany (NASDP or Nazi) portrayed itself as the champion of traditional morality, yet between 1939 and 1945, these same espoused moral beliefs were the basis for the execution of a horror hitherto unknown to humanity.
Little wonder that all the accused at the subsequent Nuremberg trials cited “Befehl ist Befehl” (“an order is an order” or “orders from above”) as an excuse in what has since come to be known as the Nuremberg Defence.
“Befehl ist Befehl” is a plea in a court of law, derived from command responsibility, where a person (more often a member of the military, paramilitary or law enforcement) pleads not guilty because they were simply executing “orders from above”.
For the avoidance of doubt, the trials (held under the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal that set them up) ultimately established that “orders from above” was not enough to escape punishment, though it could be considered in reducing punishment.
So, anyone who goes ahead to shoot ballot box snatchers (disregard the asinine and hare-brained claim that ballot box snatchers are always armed, also disregard the possibility of misidentification or malice); despite the fact that the Electoral Act clearly prescribes a 24-month maximum jail term for such an offence; despite the fact that the individual has not been subjected to due process in a court of law; has committed extrajudicial murder and will pay the price (subject to the rule of law) with their life sooner or later.
Just to be clear, I have to state for the record that snatching ballot boxes remains an electoral crime in Nigeria. However, those who commit such a crime should face the full wrath of the law and not an extrajudicial firing squad or lynch mob.
With a little education, it is evident that, President Muhammadu Buhari, his supporters and the Nazis before them suffer(ed) from moral subjectivism.
Under moral subjectivism, good and bad are entirely subjective commodities. This means that if Buhari or the Nazis thought an act is right, as far as they are concerned, it is as right as is possible for moral right to exist.
We saw that during Buhari’s tenure as a military Head of State (when people were pronounced guilty until they could prove themselves innocent); we see it in Buhari’s acts as Nigeria’s current President, and we saw that in the Nazi Germany’s insistence on their moral right to exterminate the Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, the mentally and physically handicapped, homosexuals, ethnic Poles and Slavs, etc.
For moral subjectivists, so long as they believe that what they are doing is right, whatever anyone else thinks or thought is entirely irrelevant. It is strictly a relationship between them (in this case Buhari, the actor/believer) and the act, and often does not have any basis in law and ethics.
Prof Omoroge would go ahead to cite the Nazi Germany example as a classic case of Nietzsche’s “Morality in the Pejorative Sense” (MPS), where people who are guided by their own understanding of “morality” assume that this “morality” has universal applicability and when not legal, they believe their beliefs to be superior to the laws of the land.
The MPS like Buhari “says stubbornly and inexorably, ‘I am morality itself, and nothing besides (no person other than me) is morality (or can be considered moral)”.
This is a dangerous slippery slope into authoritarianism and dictatorship.
So please, all eligible voters in the subsequent elections should troop out and perform their civic responsibility.
No one should snatch ballot boxes.
No one should compromise the electoral process.
No one should bomb INEC offices or collation centres.
No one should shoot citizens who are exercising their right to vote.
Anyone who commits any of the offences above should be apprehended and made to face the law.
Election Day is for voting, not for extrajudicial murder.
Nigeria go survive
Dr Jekwu Ozoemena, Port Harcourt, Rivers State
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