Ahmad Isah, a media personality and host of ‘Brekete Family’ – a program that offers ordinary citizens a platform to air their stories of injustices suffered and seek redress – is under scrutiny for assaulting a lady accused of burning a child over allegation of witchcraft. Rightly so.

The assault is on record in a BBC Africa Eye documentary that followed the populist justice warrior as he administered his own brand of justice on his Radio and TV Show, revealing a propensity for unconventional ways that often cross the line into human rights violation.

In the case that has brought him under scrutiny, for instance, the lady he slapped multiple times was arrested and brought to his studio following a scene in which he listened to the victim’s mother and another third party. The lady is accused of pouring kerosene on the head of her brother’s daughter – a child below the age 10, and setting her on fire. Ahmad had earlier crowdsourced over 2 million Naira for the girl’s treatment. 

While interviewing the suspect – or interrogating if you follow the chain of custody from arrest to the on-camera spectacle, Ahmad proceeded to slap the accused multiple times after she couldn’t answer his question to his satisfaction.

Nigerians on Twitter are largely rising in defense of the human rights defender on the premise that anyone ‘guilty’ of such an awful crime is deserving of whatever comeuppance befalls them. And right there is where any self-respecting human rights defender will tell anyone who cares to listen, lie the bone of contention in defense of human rights.

Anyone can be accused of anything and everyone else can only consider them guilty to the best of their first-hand knowledge. Until the accused stands before a judge and (likely not) jury and is proven guilty, it is their human right to be presumed innocent and treated as such.

The crime of the lady – if proven guilty, stands separate from the misdemeanor assault committed by Ahmad Isah. Whatever Nigerians may feel about the rightness of it is immaterial, and Ahmad Isah will confirm this to his admirers if he has been a student of the human rights he champions with his activism history.

Just last year, the country went up in flames as young Nigerians demanded an end to police brutality. A handful of months later, the same demography expressed outrage that the primary suspect in the case of Iniobong Umoren – the slain job-seeker, was not manhandled in the manner peaceful protesters were in February 2021. Now, the same demography is hailing the illegal assault of a suspect by the ‘Ordinary President.’

Perhaps, in seeking justice in a country that is miserly with its delivery, we blindly seek out anything even if it is in essence more injustice; just so long as it makes us feel momentarily good?

These excesses we allow when passions are high are what spills over into honest daylight, and we wonder why our hashtags seeking justice for police brutality amount to little in the end.