"The
Free Evans campaign is not an oddity. It's our collective baby. It
exemplifies the reaction of our collective unconscious to abominable
success" - A Nigerian writer and columnist writes...
Evans
The arrest of Evans, the press-styled 'kidnapping kingpin’,
provoked a backlash typical of a case of criminal grandeur in this
clime.
As soon as Evans began to sing about the size of his kidnap
industry and his principle of collecting handsome ransoms in hard
currency and the pictures of his Lagos and Accra mansions emerged to
validate his confessions, a fan club surfaced and started gushing over
his ‘genius’ and his fabulous success.
Within a few days, the Free Evans campaign had taken shape, grown
in membership and became as vociferous as the Jewish mob that demanded a
Passover pardon for Barabbas.
Evans captured people and held them against their will. He put a
price on them. He commodified them. He commercialized and capitalized
human captivity, making it an ongoing concern in Nigerian society.
For many years, Evans exploited people’s affection for their loved
ones. He would create the agony of a member of the family missing. Then,
he would proceed to exploit the climate of anxiety, desperation and
panic in the household of his victim to enrich himself. He would
threaten to kill if his price was not paid in full. Sometimes, he would
take both the ransom and the life of the hostage.
Yet, you didn’t see the Nigerian public united in collective relief
that the free reign of the cold- blooded predator had been punctuated
and that he would soon answer for his crimes and receive his
comeuppance.
We couldn’t form a consensus on his morality. We couldn’t agree on
the depravity of his iron-seared conscience. We couldn’t deplore, as one
man, the wickedness of his outsized multi-million dollar ‘business’.
We couldn’t disown Evans because he fitted our imago. His chutzpah
taunted the inner version of our timid, risk-averse selves. He cut the
figure of the insanely rich criminal we dream we would have become if we
weren't restrained by cowardice.
The Free Evans campaign is not an oddity. It’s our collective baby.
It exemplifies the reaction of our collective unconscious to abominable
success.
We crave the experience of a magic alchemy that delivers prosperity
without value-adding diligence. Evans personified the reality of that
possibility. That’s why we are infatuated with him. That’s why we are
rooting for him.
We are inclined to yearn to be identified with the rich villain. We
fetishize their story. We idolize them, imagining that we are
qualifying ourselves for initiation into the in-crowd.
Wealthy criminals don’t have to have any relationship with us.
Their affairs may not have benefited us in any way. They are often
complete strangers.
But we feel obligated to lend ourselves to championing their cause
when their careers hit the buffers. Our instinct is to defend them,
rationalize their choice and generate specious reasons why they must be
exculpated.
We are overly protective of criminals of imposing stature. We yield
ourselves to averting their ‘humiliation’ before the law. We urge
indulgence, respect and deference. We explain that those sane adults are
victims of fate.
People who leverage our weak security architecture to maximize
their criminal potential awe us. The wow factor of their felony charms
us. It inspires us to jealousy.
Nigeria is rich in Evans characters. They abound in government.
They kidnap states, ministries and parastatals and exact ransom us.
Yet, we don’t abhor them. We envy them. We begrudge them their pay dirt. We wish we could trade places with them.
Seemingly decent people have come out to condemn and compliment
Evans in the same breath. They submit that his acts were wicked. But
they advise that we appreciate and learn from his ingenuity, ambition
and taste. He brought innovation to kidnapping… and grew into a Dangote.
But the truth is that Evans harbored no virtue in his person. His
undoing was not caused by a character flaw. His disgrace developed from a
character vacuum. He had no character.
Evans did not have impressive brainpower that was corrupted by
greed. Greed was the very makeup of his brainpower. He did not misuse
his fertile mind: he had none. He forfeited the entirety of his being in
a Faustian barter with Mammon.
The attempt to salvage some goodness from Evans and project him, as
a model worthy of emulation, on the basis of that nice quality, is
reprehensible. Evans has no socially redeeming value. He sold all of
himself to evil. He is only worthy to serve as an example of a man
bankrupt in virtue.
People are glamorizing his ‘trade’ because he managed to get
kidnapping down to a fine art. The rave reviews say more about the
character of the shameless cheerleaders than the putative sophistication
of Evans, their hero. Their freemasonry gave them away as kindred
spirits.
The Free Evans parade is giving full theatrical expression to the
warped philosophy that money is all that matters. That all successes are
valid. That all’s fair in love and war.
We can’t find a common ground on Evans because we pornify wealth. In culture. In songs. In religion.
We judge people’s significance by the abundance of their
possessions. We enthrone the filthy rich. We don’t permit ourselves to
be distracted by the question of what shortcut led them to untraceable
riches.
The stupefying argument about the legitimacy of the works of Evans
would never happened if he was an indigent kidnapper. We don’t debate
the innocence of lowly criminals. We serve them jungle justice. We
hasten to garland them with car tires, baptize them with petrol and
immolate them.
Evans was a Big Man. He was no loser. He never stinted on his
niche. He supersized his department, pursued it as a vocation and
amassed enormous wealth thereby.
The Free Evans vanguard says his fake lifestyle should have lasted
forever. The growth of his lucre should never have ceased. He should
have been allowed to grow from strength to strength.
The support for Evans is a sign that there might be hope for Abubakar Shekau.
Boko Haram, the terrorist group, Shekau leads, has murdered tens of
thousands of people. They have made wastelands of many villages,
rendered a million people refugees and imposed death by starvation on
thousands of children.
Three years ago, Boko Haram abducted over 200 girls from a
secondary school in Chibok. They abused the girls as sex slaves. And
they caused about a dozen of the parents of the girls to die of
heartache.
The outpouring of love towards Evans suggests that if Shekau was
arrested tomorrow, the mad caliph would find a group of praise singers
ready. All he need do is prove that he was a wealthy psychopath. If he
revealed a staggering net worth and pointed at a trophy property in
Abuja or Dubai, he would be shown lots of love.
**********************
Written by: Emmanuel Ugwu for SaharaReporters. immaugwu@gmail.com
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