Cain and Abel

The above is the picture of three of four Nigerians boys convicted on Tuesday, for the murder of a Sierra Leonian woman last year in Peckham. The murder of Zainab Kalokoh at a christening party last year upset me greatly for several reasons.

I know the area where she was killed very well. I used to hang out with a good friend when they lived on the street where it happened, just down the road from me in New Cross. The brutality of her murder. They shot her as she carried her baby niece, then proceeded to rob the rest of the well-wishers. And also it was where she was killed, in a community hall, the kind in which Nigerians abroad have parties all the time.

I sneer at these parties all the time, after all it's the older non-integrated generation who have parties in these places. Why would a supposedly well conditioned British Nigerian like me not sneer? It's in these places that people keep their ties to home, to the motherland, something Nigerian immigrants are incredibly adept at. It's one of the places where families get away from some grinding nine pms to five ams, to touch home again. It's night cleaners, caterers, labourers put on their Saturday night best, to revel in the great leveller that is London.

The places ar filled with the "if we weren't in London" kind talk - the great leveller London. It's where the legit and the illegit mix, the lawyer, the council worker, the people from Ibadan, Onitsha, and Lokoja entwine with their own once again. It's not the Nigeria of the Lagos metropolitan "I'm the average" Nigerian elite. It's where the parents speak to their children in various Nigerian languages without the child cringing for fear of shredded street cred. The other kids' parents also speak to them in that language. It's where the kids actually tease other kids for butchering their Nigerian names. They're Chigozie and Kunle rather John and James.

For many of these children, it's as close as they've ever gotten to where "my mum's from". It's where their diet doesn't smell or seem strange. It's the burning bush of immigrant communities. It's where the sandals come off. It's sacred ground.

These butchers probably knew all this, and that's why they went there. The one on the right, Jude Odigie, for want of a less courteous word, has a sergeant-major on his face. You don't get more Nigerian than that. The one on the left, Diamond Babamuboni, looks like he'd fit in as an Alabaru at Iddo market. I blame his name. Diamond, what the hell does that mean? The one in the middle is Timy Babumuboni, Diamond's younger brother. The fourth kid can't be named, probably because of a court order on account of his age.

Whenever Nigerians in Britain are convicted of violent crimes in this country, I'm shocked. I don't associate Nigerians with knives and guns. Credit card fraud, possibly drugs, but nothing involving weapons. Yes, I know all these things are tied. I'm naive - just look at Nigeria. Of course there's the argument that these kids aren't even Nigerian.

The pictures appeared in the Daily Telegraph in an article screaming blue murder about Britain's immigration system. Some of the boys should have been removed from the country. But their legal status changes nothing on the severity of the crime.

The Bamuboni's came to Britain in 1994, after their father had been killed in a robbery. In 1990s Nigeria, that was par for the course, lives were scythed down with a much ease as a gardener trims hedges. Families fled. Zainab Kalokoh was escaping the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone - a place where rebels asked potential victims, "short sleeve or long sleeve". Which mean, would you like your arm chopped off at above the elbow, or at the wrist.

Legally or illegally, comfortably or uncomfortably, Britain gave them succour. One set took the path of Cain, the other took that of Abel, a lamb to be slaughtered. Just thought I'd give you some season's cheer...