Rethink It With Ben: Do not kill killers. It's no longer cool

The video of a ‘7yr’ old boy that was lynched for stealing made shock waves around the world.

Neither the age of the boy nor what he stole is consequential. Should he be lynched?

Lots of people are of the opinion that the dastardly act was uncalled for and reflects how backward a nation Nigeria is.

But it’s easy to shout and spit when you are not a victim or related to a victim. If your loved one is killed for his mobile phone, would you still condemn those that carry out these extra-judicial killings?

Should murderers, rapists and terrorists enjoy more rights than their victims?

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Mass killer Breivik accuses Norway of violating his human rights

 (Reuters)

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in July 2011 and was sentenced to a maximum of 21 years in prison.

This year he sued the Norwegian government for “exposing him to inhuman and degrading treatment”. He won.

How does locking someone up for life equate to murdering 77 people or even one person for that matter?

How does this discourage someone who’s thinking of going on a killing spree? Where are the stats that suggest that being humane to cold-blooded killers has made the world a better place?

Have we now become too civilised to kill cold-blooded murderers because it tramples on their human rights?

Instead, they are locked up and celebrated. Books are written on them, big news agencies grant them interviews, Hollywood honours them with movies and groupies send them nudes, seeking sex and some proposing marriage.

All the while, the families of the victims are taxed to feed and clothe them in prison.

This is how terrorism grew to become what it is today. When it should have been stopped, the West was busy playing the “we are civilised card”.

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Should Nigerians live by the standards of the Western nations? Why are developing nations so much in a hurry to be like America, that they copy and paste everything without first thinking it through?

A 20th century nation cannot live by 21st-century laws.

Just look at the Middle East. In just 5 years after the ‘celebrated’ Arab Spring, hundreds of thousands have died and millions of refugees have been created.

A region which had lived by laws over 500 years old literally jumped overnight to this century and the result is chaos. Now Libyans openly admit that life under Gaddafi was better.

America was once like Nigeria. They have gone through the phases we are currently going through. And they lived by laws made to suit every phase of their development. When they outgrew a law because they’ve advanced past that phase they changed it.

Let’s not be in a hurry to be more civilised than our nation can handle.

Sentences are meant to be deterrents. They are meant to dissuade would-be perpetrators of crime from doing so. The more dangerous the crime the tougher the punishment associated with it should be.

Street lynching should be frowned upon, even though we all know how ‘active’ our police force is. Innocent people have been killed because someone tagged them a thief.

I believe the death penalty is essential and should be carried out promptly after a judge orders it. Only in cases of manslaughter should a person be imprisoned.

By not respecting the victims' rights the murderer forfeited theirs.

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”, said Mahatma Gandhi but if so, why isn’t half of Saudi Arabia where Sharia law is practiced, not blind.