Maria Kobara was walking a 12-year-old girl to church on Owo Street in Mile 2, Diobu, Port Harcourt, on Saturday when a woman stopped her and demanded to know whose child she was taking.
Kobara explained that the girl's mother had asked her to take the child to a church on Eagle Island. But the woman who stopped her wasn't satisfied. She called the girl's father, who then called his wife to check if she had actually sent their daughter with a stranger.
The mother confirmed she had. But by the time that confirmation came, Kobara was already being beaten by a crowd that had gathered and accused her of being a child thief.
Operatives from the Azikiwe Police Division arrived and rescued her before the mob could kill her. They took everyone involved to the station, where the mother's statement cleared Kobara.
"The woman was being physically assaulted by the mob, who accused her of attempting to steal the child when our officers arrived and rescued her," said SP Grace Iringe-Koko, spokesperson for the Rivers State Police Command.
The police spokesperson said preliminary investigations showed that a relative of the girl's father had raised the alarm, which drew passers-by and residents to the scene. The mob ignored Kobara's explanations that she knew the child's mother and that the mother was aware of their movement.
At the station, the child's mother confirmed that Kobara wasn't a thief. She was on her way to clean a branch of their church on Eagle Island when she was intercepted and falsely accused.
Iringe-Koko urged residents to report suspected incidents to the police rather than resorting to extrajudicial actions. She warned that mob action and jungle justice wouldn't be tolerated under any guise by the command, and that anyone involved in such unlawful acts would face the full weight of the law.
Eyewitness Nelson Ogiriya told our correspondent that but for the quick intervention of the police, Kobara would have been lynched.
"As I was passing, I saw a crowd on Owo Street, so I tried to find out what was happening. I discovered that a woman was taking a 12-year-old girl to church when another woman stopped her and asked who the child was to her," Ogiriya said.
This incident is the latest in a long pattern of jungle justice in Nigeria, where mobs take the law into their own hands before facts are established. In many cases, the accused turns out to be innocent — but not before serious injury or death has occurred.
The Rivers State Police Command has repeatedly warned against mob action, but such incidents continue to occur across the state and the country. The command says it will prosecute anyone found guilty of participating in extrajudicial killings or assaults.