When couple spend night together and one dies: Justice on pause, outrage on repeat, by Stephanie Shaakaa

2026-03-07 - 08:47

In this country, verdicts are often declared before facts arrive. A man and a woman spend the night together. By morning, one of them is dead. If it is the woman, the man is already a monster before the police arrive. His name trends. Words like ritualist, killer, predator attach themselves with frightening ease. His photograph circulates. His life, as he knew it, is over, regardless of what an investigation may later reveal. If it is the man who dies, the tone shifts. Speculation becomes softer. Perhaps he took something. Perhaps he pushed himself too far. Perhaps it was an accident. And if the woman survives, tears, real or perceived, often seal public sympathy before a single forensic report is released. In both cases, the facts are still unborn. But the verdict is already alive. This pattern repeats across Nigeria. Allegations explode across blogs and timelines within hours. Hashtags demand justice before toxicology reports are completed. Suspects are publicly condemned long before the police conclude investigations. Genuine victims struggle to be believed once public sympathy shifts. Somewhere in this rush, the patient search for truth fractures. This is not an argument against justice for women. Violence is real. Abuse is real. Exploitation is real. The law must protect the vulnerable without hesitation. But justice cannot survive on assumptions. Narrative began outrunning evidence. We have become a society that decides first and investigates later. Social media does not wait for autopsy results. It does not wait for witness statements. It feeds on emotion. It amplifies outrage. It rewards the most dramatic interpretation. The crowd does not ask, What happened? The crowd asks, Who should we blame? Gender often supplies the answer. Men are strong, therefore dangerous. Women are vulnerable, therefore truthful. When tragedy strikes, we instinctively assign roles before examining reality. The man becomes the aggressor in the public imagination, the woman the victim. If the script reverses, we search for explanations that preserve the story we are more comfortable telling. But stereotypes are not evidence. They are shortcuts. And shortcuts in matters of life and liberty are dangerous. A false accusation can destroy a man permanently. A dismissed allegation can endanger a woman permanently. When bias in either direction guides conclusions, the very justice system we claim to defend weakens. This is not about choosing sides between men and women. It is about refusing to let sympathy replace scrutiny. It is about understanding that tears are not proof, just as masculinity is not guilt. The presumption of innocence is not a favour extended selectively. It is a constitutional principle embedded in democratic societies to protect every citizen from the volatility of public opinion. Once we apply it unevenly, we begin to erode the rule of law itself. A society that convicts through hashtags slowly loses respect for institutions. Courts appear irrelevant. Police investigations seem secondary to online verdicts. Reputations are executed in digital public squares long before evidence is tested. When facts eventually surface, they rarely travel with the same speed or intensity as the original accusation. Imagine a young professional arrested before sunrise. His photo splashed across blogs by noon. By evening, his employer suspends him pending investigation. His parents stop answering calls. Weeks later, evidence clears him. But the internet does not issue apologies with the same enthusiasm it issued condemnation. The stain lingers. Or imagine a genuine victim whose case is prematurely doubted because earlier accusations elsewhere collapsed. Bias does not only destroy the accused. It endangers those who truly need protection. Justice must not wear a skirt or trousers. It must wear a blindfold. If we care about victims, we must care about facts. If we care about fairness, we must resist the seduction of outrage. The next headline could involve anyone: a brother, a sister, a colleague, a child. When we allow gender to write the verdict before evidence speaks, we are not defending justice. We are defending a narrative. And narratives, no matter how popular, cannot crossexamine witnesses. They cannot test DNA. They cannot weigh testimony under oath. Only evidence can. The day emotion permanently replaces evidence is the day justice becomes theatre. And in a theatre, anyone can be cast as the villain. When we abandon patience for proof, we do not strengthen justice. We make everyone vulnerable. Justice without patience is no longer justice. It is theatre. Vanguard News