"My Son is Still Alive!"- Mother of Kidnapped Boy Rumoured to be Beheaded

"My Son is Still Alive!"- Mother of Kidnapped Boy Rumoured to be Beheaded

Ifeanyi Okenwa was kidnapped on Tuesday, 2nd July, 2013 by 9am at his school in Achara Lay-out, Enugu. Few days ago, a video went rife of a ritualist who had been caught with the head of a boy around that age and it was widely reported that the victim was Ifeanyi Okenwa.

However, when I put a call through to the mother of the boy, here is what she had to say:

"God forbid! My son is alive...please continue to pray for him. My son is not the dead boy!". The kidnapped boy is still missing but the mother has confirmed it wasn't her son that was beheaded.

Apparently, people heard about the kidnapped boy, saw the video of the beheaded boy, and decided to put two and two together. Unfortunately, they got it all wrong and added to the trauma of the family the more.

Meanwhile, there is an issue we have to talk about. Why are we quick to record and spread gory videos of dead accident victims, rape victims and "beheaded" people in the name of good journalism? Now, don't get me wrong...reports have to be validated, but does it ever occur to us that by so doing, we only rub salt on the injury?

A girl is raped and the rapist records the video of the act. We "sympathize" with the girl but we aid the rapist by spreading the video anyway. Remember the ALUU 4? People actually stood there and did nothing whilst the boys were being beaten. Or rather, they did just one thing; they were recording and snapping pictures. I bet, all they had in mind was traffic- traffic to a blog, on-line comments of "concerned Nigerians"...etc. They knew the act was wrong but their "nose for news", not their hearts, responded to it. They probably were right afterall....we were all interested in their videos and we spread them with such amazing speed.

Now, do you think that a parent whose son has been beheaded will record the gory sight of it and upload it on the internet? Do you see it now? It's easy to spread such videos when the victim is not in any way related to us; but if he were (God forbid) ...we'd definitely reconsider, no matter how internet-savvy we claim to be.

Lest I sound holier-than-thou, I should let you know that I was about uploading the video of the beheaded boy myself. Yes, we always warn about "viewer's discretion" but is there any need to consider the family members of victims? If yes, how then do we validate these stories? So then, what is the way forward?