As Southeast Nigeria continues to unravel under the burden of crushing insecurity, a people, many of whom survived the atrocities of the Nigerian Civil War are being forced to relive the arresting anxieties that were associated with those heady days when a newly independent country deployed the darkest arts to keep the confection of secession away from one of its crucial constituents.
With the benefit of hindsight, and considering the fiery questions which continue to flagellate the Giant of Africa from that part of the country, perhaps, Nigeria would have been better off without a part of it that has obviously been a ‘problem’ part.
For years now, the Indigenous People of Biafra, led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has successful whipped up the thorny issue of Biafra in the Southeast, and with it, a storm of destruction that is finally threatening to rip the Southeast apart.
What started as tantrums over the abduction of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in Kenya in 2021 and his subsequent forceful return to Nigeria where he faces terrorism-related charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja has now let a clan of hyenas into the Southeast, one which is far more dangerous than anything the Southeast has seen before. The audacity of the terror now gripping the Southeast in its furious claws is utterly alarming to put it mildly.
Recently, letters listing threats were sent to ten local governments in Anambra State.Each of the letters was unmistakably minatory. The letters put Ihiala,Aguata,Nnewi South, Awka North, Awka South, Idemili North ,Idemili South, Orumba South,Orumba North and Anambra East Council areas in the crosshairs of the authors of the letters which warned security operatives in the state to get ready for action in ‘ Biafra Land.’ The letters also had warnings for the Anambra State Governor. The letters menacingly demanded the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from the custody of the Department of State Services.
Between March 17, 2022, when Mr. Chukwuma Soludo was sworn into office as governor of Anambra State and May 15, 2022, gunmen have razed down the secretariats of Nnewi South, Aguata and Idemili North Council areas of Anambra State.
These iniquitous attacks on public buildings in the Southeast when put side by side the many innocent people killed in the region since last year paint an alarming picture of the degeneration of the security situation in the Southeast.
In many ways, what is happening in the Southeast is traceable to the activities of the IPOB and its regime of tantrums in the Southeast. The enforcement of the sit-at-home order imposed and enforced since Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was arrested precipitated the parlous security situation of in the Southeast. To kill the fly, the Federal Government by flooding the Southeast with soldiers, disproportionately reached for the sledgehammer, thus further inflaming an already tense situation.
The IPOB has since washed its hands off the weekly sit-at-home order, yet it continues to be fully observed and enforced to beg the question of who is enforcing it and who are those turning the Southeast into a theatre of blood.
It is completely inconceivable that a region whose defiant entrepreneurial prowess and powers of discovery were on full display as it crawled its way back from the utter despair of the immediate post-civil war period should be steeped in such insecurity.
What is even more disturbing is that no one is taking responsibility. It has even been reported that security personnel in the Southeast now comply with the sit-at-home order for fear of their lives in addition to going about their duties without their uniforms.
While innocent people in the Southeast are cut down everyday, fingers continue to be pointed. While the government points accusatory fingers over the killings at the IPOB, the IPOB accuses the government of sponsoring those turning he Southeast into a warzone. The killers continue to be conveniently described as unknown gunmen.
The danger with the presence of the IPOB in the Southeast was always that its activities would serve to break the fallow ground, as Boko Haram did in the Northeast, thus preparing the way for master criminals to seed terror and chaos. That is seemingly what is playing out in the Southeast.
Security operatives in the Southeast must now forcefully respond to what has quickly become an existential crises stoked in the Southeast by nameless, faceless and numberless criminals. It should never be the case that people can no longer go about their businesses in any part of Nigeria without fear of being killed or abducted.
Those who attack innocent people and burn down public buildings are criminals and nothing more. Unless they are rooted out of Nigeria and quickly too, Nigerians will continue to dance to the drumbeats of death and destruction.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com