In the early hours of 5 October 2012, four undergraduate friends from the Department of Geology at the University of Port Harcourt — Ugonna Obuzor (18), Lloyd Toku Mike (19), Chiadika Biringa (20) and Tekena Elkanah (20) — went to Aluu, an Ikwerre community on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, to recover money from a debtor. A misunderstanding escalated into an accusation of armed robbery and laptop theft.
A mob, encouraged by a local vigilante and (according to police) with the knowledge of a community traditional ruler, seized the four young men. They were beaten with sticks and concrete blocks, stripped naked, dragged through the dirt streets of Aluu, doused in petrol, garlanded with tyres and burned alive. The entire ordeal — over more than an hour — was filmed on mobile phones by bystanders. When the video surfaced on YouTube and Facebook a few days later it became one of the most-shared pieces of footage in Nigeria's young social-media era.
The national outcry forced a response. Thirteen people were arrested, including the Aluu traditional ruler, vigilantes and the man whose debt had triggered the dispute. The University of Port Harcourt was shut briefly amid retaliatory student protests. In 2017 — five years after the killings — a Port Harcourt High Court convicted three of the accused (Lucky Orji, Abang Cyril and David Chinasa Mike) of murder and sentenced them to death by hanging; others were acquitted on insufficient evidence.
'Aluu Four' entered the language as shorthand for jungle justice and for the casual cruelty of a mob with phones. It catalysed a generation of campaigns — by EiE Nigeria, BudgIT, and later by the End SARS movement — against extrajudicial violence, whether by the state or by the street.