Veteran Nigerian comedian Atunyota Alleluya Akpobome, better known as Alibaba, has shared his reaction to the shocking killing of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead on stage at Utah Valley University during a TPUSA event on Wednesday.
Describing the incident as tragic, Alibaba strongly condemned the violence, stressing that no one deserves to be killed. Yet he admitted to feeling an unusual sense of relief when the identity of the alleged shooter was revealed.
“It’s a sad thing that Charlie had to be killed, and I’m totally against shooting and killing of anyone,” he said. “That said, when I heard about the shooting… you don’t know the relief I had that it wasn’t a Black guy, not Arab, not Muslim. It would have been bad.”
U.S. authorities have since named 22-year-old Tyler Robinson from Utah as the suspect. Robinson, who once studied on scholarship at Utah State University, reportedly became more politically outspoken in recent years and had criticised Kirk for “spreading hate.”
Although he grew up in a conservative, pro-gun Republican household, Robinson allegedly distanced himself from his family’s politics before the attack. His voter registration is currently listed as nonpartisan and inactive.
The case has sparked debates in the U.S. and abroad about political polarization, extremism, and gun culture. Alibaba’s reaction echoes similar sentiments voiced in Utah itself. Governor Spencer Cox admitted during a press conference that he had prayed the shooter would not turn out to be “one of us.”
“For 33 hours, I was praying that if this had to happen here that it wouldn’t be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country… Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I hoped for… But it did happen here, and it was one of us,” Cox said.
For Alibaba, his concern was the global fallout if the shooter had been from already stigmatised communities. His comment underlines how violent acts often reverberate far beyond those directly involved, shaping perceptions and narratives about entire groups of people.
