Joke Silva and the right to be

Joke Silva didn’t feature in Kunle Afolayan’s ‘Anikulapo’, so ordinarily she has no reason to be riding the internet waves at this time.

However, in a sad reminder of an ugly past that everyone ought to be in a hurry to forget, she has become perhaps the most trending item in Nigeria’s digital space. At the moment, Mrs. Silva is being put through the worst form of cyber-lynching in human history – for the simple act of attending a women’s rally hosted in support of the APC presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

It is important to say that the jungle justice and victimisation of Mrs. Silva is a major detraction from what Nigeria ought to have become. Human rights are rooted in the status of being a human being. The meaning is that all persons are holders of life, dignity, liberty, expression, movement, fair hearing, association, and the like, and only a corpse loses these fundamental freedoms and entitlements.

Even at that, corpses notwithstanding their loss of being aren’t stripped of their dignity. Every human being is a treasure walking on two legs; a treasure that cannot be reduced on the platter of politics or digital quarrels.

No human being is qualified to challenge and diminish the right of the next person; all human beings are created and endowed equally with rights by God Almighty.

Politics is a contest for power and in every civilised nation, political power is won and lost between opposing political forces. In fact, the beauty, as well as the survival of every democratic system, is anchored on a multi-polar political system, in which a healthy congregation of ideas and cross-fertilisation of opinions, help to oil the democratic wheel.

Mrs. Silva is unarguably Nigeria’s finest actress of all time. In an unmatched manner, she has given her best to the development of the country’s creative industry and put Nigeria on the world map. To treat her in this manner is an all-time low.

• Olusola Adegbite, United Kingdom.