....thank you Lord for Gideon's life, and all the years we shared with him. We lift him to you today, in honour of the good we saw in him and the love we felt from him.
Amen.
Some few days ago
Gideon was twenty-five year old Nigerian who had just finished schooling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gideon decided to come back home in Nigeria to celebrate with his friends and family on his latest achievement.
His plane landed at exactly six pm Nigerian time and Gideon immediately boarded a cab to take him home from the airport. On his way from the airport, he got stopped by the Nigerian police. They were pulled over at a checkpoint because the young corporal felt Gideon was "too young" to own the kind of expensive cloth and wristwatch he had on.
They immediately asked to see his phone which he showed to them, an iPhone X. Both officers looked at themselves and smiled.
“Unlock it”
“Why? You don't have a right to look at my phone” Gideon challenged the officers. Meanwhile his cab driver sat quietly inside his cab. He was safer there.
“I say unlock this phone now or I will shoot you, you fraudster” the other officer threatened.
“Fraudster? What did I do wrong? What was my offense?”
The cab driver could tell the officers were getting infuriated. He needed to explain to this young man that that was how things were done here in the country, that he should unlock his phone for them to browse through it. The driver was about getting out of the car when all of a sudden, he saw one of the officers raise his gun and three shots fired. It took only a minute to know who had been hit by the bullet, twenty five year old Gideon laid on the floor motionless, his phone held tightly in his hand.
The men in black, the one we call the police just murdered one of us because he refused to unlock his phone.
