According to Wikipedia, “A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioural or mental pattern that may cause suffering or a poor ability to function in life. Such features may be persistent. Mental disorders are usually defined by a combination of how a person behaves, feels, perceives, or thinks“.

While a mob, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary is defined as a large or disorderly crowd, especially one bent on riotous or destructive action.

A careful analysis of the two definitions above shows how intertwined mob action and mental disorder are. Wikipedia in the latter part defined mental disorder as a combination of how a person behaves, perceive or thinks which is in direct relation to mob action which comprises of a disorderly crowd bent on a destructive action.

For a crowd to be in a disordered manner, it must surely have low level of thinking and organisation if not, a group of right-thinking individuals won’t embark on a mob action leading to the death of an unnamed Police inspector yesterday, October 5, 2017, in Adamawa State after the officer killed a passenger.

As stated in a previous article on this same story, that the officer killed a passenger is not a licence for him to be killed without being tried. The acceptable norm is for the crowd to arrest him and hand him over to security agencies for prosecution but that was jettisoned for lynching which is an anti-social behaviour.

The lynching of suspects has been with us in this society for a long period of time and is yet to be abated. The bad effects of lynching is that apart from being an illegal means of dispensing justice, it has resulted in the death of innocent Nigerians that were mistakenly caught in the web of mob actions.

Worthy of mentioning is the October 5, 2012, killing of Ugonna Obuzor, Toku Lloyd, Chiadika Biringa, and Tekena Elkanah in Aluu village near University of Port Harcourt Rivers.

The lynching of alleged criminals and offenders in our society is a bad trend that needs to be nipped in the bud before it finally becomes an acceptable part of us. The earlier we accept its a mental disorder worse than schizophrenia, the better for us.

The value placed on human lives are being eroded by lynching which has reduced humans to the same level as animals like goats and rams. That a man in his right thinking sense will light up a fellow man with petrol and tyres speaks a lot about the mental health of such an individual.

Mob actions must be discouraged in our society, the sanctity of human lives must be continually upheld.

Editor