Dandara dos Santos was born a boy 42 years ago in Brazil. Insisting he was a girl trapped in a boy's body, he first began to dress and act like a girl just the way Nigerian barbie doll Bob Risky is currently doing, before he finally transformed himself into a full blown woman.

Brazil is the most populous nation in South America, and with a population that is largely Catholic, also doubles as the largest Catholic country on earth...

Brazil also ranks as a country with the highest recorded cases of hate killings and discrimination against transgender people in South America, even though it is often described as a "very tolerant country".

With majority Catholic countries like Argentina and Co in the group, Brazil ranks as one of the most dangerous places to live for transgender and LGBTq people in the world.

Despite the prevalent phobia for "abnormal people" in Brazil, Dandara's mother, a staunch Catholic herself, unlike other Brazilian mothers who would promptly push such a child out of the house, refused to send her child out of the house, insisting that "Jesus came not for the healthy but the sick".

Ironically, Dandara became a victim of hate crime when a long time "customer" picked him up, after "business", lured him to the slums of Fortaleza where phobia for Trans people was highest, and there he met his end in such a brutal manner.

About 6 Brazilian teenagers mobbed him so thoroughly that, covered in dust and blood, they kicked his face, smashed a big stone on his head, beat him with planks of wood, so thoroughly exhausted from the beating and unable to walk, he was carried into a wheelbarrow and wheeled to where he was shot twice in the face and then bludgeoned.

For me, this is a gross act of man's inhumanity to man. And this is just one out of a long string of crimes against people, in Brazil and even Nigeria.

Man is just a complex kind of hypocritical animal who is not only full of contradiction, but also delights in lying to himself, and humanity has been lying to itself almost as long as man has been around on this planet. And the killing of Dandara shows how evil man can get....

Why would anyone be brutally executed for choosing to look the way he wants to look? What is wrong with people? If you don't like rap, don't attend the concert. If you don't like beef, look away or buy fish. How does the fact that a man chooses to transform to a woman a problem, especially when the man goes about his own business?

I think it is intolerant people themselves, those who hide under any guise whatsover today, and are calling for the heads of people they consider as abnormal, it is they in fact, who are sick in the mind because people's preferences should not be anyone's problem any more than musical tastes or preference in food and drink does...if you don't like the way someone looks, please look the other way, don't discriminate against, attack or kill him/her...

And this is happening everywhere...

Almost about the same time Dandara was killed, in Ondo west Local Government Area of Ondo state, here in our very own Nigeria, one honourable Dotun who was a supervisory counsellor there was caught pants down with his male lover, one Olumide, they were attacked by a mob, the honorable escaped, and the lover died the next morning following wounds sustained from the attacks. Bad enough, people celebrated the killing of Olumide as the "removing of the aberration from society"!

As I type these words, kids are currently facing serious abuse in Eket, Akwa Ibom state, in fact, my soon to be released book "The Memoir of a White Witch" is based on eye witness account of the same subject of gross human rights abuse...

I think we should all say no to mob justice because non of us is perfect...

RIP Olumide....RIP Dandara... And may God console Dandara's aged mother and Olumide's wife and two kids...

*Albert Afeso Akanbi|19:01|23.06.18*