Ugonna Obuzor's Twitter Updates Show Uncanny Premonition Of Aluu Mob Killings
In Perplexed ... Perplexed': On Mob Justice in Nigeria, there are uncanny updates on Ugonna Obuzor's Twitter account showing that he had a premonition of the horrible fate he and his three friends Tekena Erikena,Biringa Lordson and Mike Toku met with on October 5, 2012, in Omuokiri village of Aluu community in Rivers State according to the international award winning Nigerian writer Teju Cole, author of Open City, which won the 2012 PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
I took a look at eighteen-year-old Ugonna Obuzor's Twitter account (@tipsy_tipsy), which he last updated on October 3, two days before he was lynched alongside his three friends. His timeline isn't wordy, but it's fairly opaque, written mostly in the terse, quasi-American argot familiar to anyone who reads young Nigerians. There are a few messages in which he seems distressed about some unexplained event. Perhaps he was going through a romantic breakup (some of his retweets support this reading) or some other personal disappointment, but in light of his sudden death, the messages have taken on a decidedly different cast. On September 14, he wrote, "Its a shame buh it is wat it is...its real as this.." and, six days later, on the 20th of September, "It breaks my heart evrytym I tink abt it...still can't beliv it.." I scrolled down further down. On August 21, Ugonna had written, simply: "Perplexed." And on the day following, on August 21, 2012, the same single, haunting word again: "Perplexed."
Read his complete analysis on http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/perplexed-perplexed-on-mob-justice-in-nigeria/264006/
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