Last Monday, there were shooting incidents at three communities of Anambra state namely Abatete, Abagana and Ukpo by persons said to be enforcing the vexatious Monday sit-at-home order of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). At least five persons, mainly operatives of community vigilant groups, were reportedly shot death. These incidents jolted residents of the state back to the reality of the security threat posed by the sit-at-home culture. Before now, such major security breaches have not been reported on such days for sometime.
Truth is that the sit-at-home culture has become a huge human challenge for the southeast. It not only poses serious security risks but as well constitutes a debilitating socio-economic disruptor. Markets and businesses remain closed every Monday in various parts of the region. Even though some towns and cities are witnessing partial or full opening of businesses, others are still ghost towns on such days. In Anambra state, while life has almost returned to normal in Awka the state capital, the same cannot be said of some other towns and villages. But of course, banks remain closed across all parts of the state on such days. Other states of the southeast have similar stories to tell.
Since 2021, the security situation in the southeast has so degenerated that many indigenes of the region dread visiting their homeland. Non-indigenes hear all sorts of stories about killing and kidnappings in the zone and are afraid of visiting.
Of course, the prevailing insecurity is more felt in some parts of the region than others. Particularly notorious are Orsu local government area and parts of Orlu and Oru East LGAs, all in Imo state, as well as the neighbouring Ihiala LGA and parts of Nnewi South LGA of Anambra state. Some communities in these local government areas have become literarily taken over by criminal elements. These criminals now mount roadblocks where they extort motorists, especially in the interior roads that run through communities. Like Biko Haram and bandits in the north, they now collect taxes from villagers. They insist on being paid by families holding burials and marriage ceremonies, and failure to comply means both the family and their guests will be at risk of losing their lives should they go on with the event.
Early this year, February 10, I was at Onitsha to attend the funeral of a man who hailed from a community in Ihiala LGA but whose funeral the family had opted to hold in Onitsha due to the above described scenario. A friend and former colleague, who hails from the same community, has told me the funeral of his father, who died weeks ago, will take place in Awka. In the last few years, many Igbo families have held their traditional marriage ceremonies outside their communities, some in far away Abuja and Lagos due to insecurity – a choice that would have ordinarily been considered almost abominable before now.
Many people have run away from their homeland, leaving some of the communities almost deserted. Many members who live outside the communities are now too afraid to visit home. I know a number of friends from these parts of Anambra and Imo who have stayed away from their ancestral land for years now. These communities are not only too dangerous to live in, but also too risky to pass through, either walking or riding in a vehicle. In October, a team of Super Sport crew heading to Uyo from Lagos to cover Nigeria’s match with Libya was attacked at Isseke, along Orlu-Ihiala road close to the boundary with Awor-Idemili. Both Isseke in Anambra state and Awor-Idemili in Imo state are two of the worst-affected communities. Security agencies rescued six of the victims while three were killed and one unaccounted for. This incident underscores the fact that these criminals have become so emboldened as to now leave interior areas to operate on a federal road.
The stark implication of all this is that, within the affected areas, the state has been overwhelmed by non-state actors. These parts of the territory of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has become almost captured by forces that are hostile to the state’s security, law and order set-up. When people are more willing to obey non-state actors that ask them to sit at home (with all the socio-economic pains associated with it) than they are willing to obey the government that asks them to go out and pursue their means of sustenance, no one needs anymore to ask who is in charge. The reign of terror has become so total in some communities that sit-at-home days have become sacrosanct – no one dares move out and markets and schools remain closed. The economic ramifications for the poorest of the poor who live on daily income are insufferable.
At this juncture, it is important to reflect on how we got here. Sometime in 2021, gunmen, in a rare display of daredevilry, attacked the “B” Division of the Nigeria Police and INEC headquarters, both in Awka. I remember going home from a friend’s house that night and hearing a man on a phone call loudly and gleefully announcing to his interlocutor that “B Division is on fire.” He was visibly happy and excited that non-state actors had allegedly decimated a police station. This was the period attacks on security agents and security infrastructure was emerging as a new culture in the southeast. Many supporters of Nnamdi Kanu’s Biafran separatism saw these attacks as a sort of triumph. Few days after the Awka incident and when it had become obvious that the assaults were successfully resisted by the police with most of the assailants gunned down, I met a neighbour who is a staunch supporter of Kanu’s secessionism and he told me that the attackers were officers of the Department of State Service (DSS) and not from Kanu’s Eastern Security Network (ESN). His reason was that ESN militants could not have been so defeated. I simply told him that he was living in denial simply because he couldn’t deal with the reality that a group he has always boasted about their invisibility were so humiliatingly routed. Psychologists will explain better.
When our people were tacitly or vocally supporting attempts by non-state actors to compromise the state’s control on the social order through enforced sit-at-home exercise and attacks on state agents, they apparently did not foresee the ruinous destination that path was inevitably leading us to. It is a matter of existential necessity that the state remains in complete control of the social order and not share its authority over possession and use of arms with anyone. (If anyone besides state agents should possess arms, the state must authorize it.) Anything to the contrary will ultimately lead to a situation where we will be more willing to obey a gang that commands us to sit-at-home and starve to death than we would obey the state that directs us to go out and fend for ourselves.
No matter the shortcomings of the police and other security agencies, theirs will usually remain a much lesser evil than the absolute lawlessness and unmitigated reign of terror that ensue once the public space is surrendered to non-state actors. For instance, the anger and frustrations of having to encounter tens of police and military checkpoints (with the extortions and harassments that may come with them) can in no
way equate to the terror attendant upon encountering just one checkpoint mounted by so-called unknown gunmen.
As the saying goes, “before you make an enemy of your police, first make peace with the criminals.” The #EndSARS was a huge lesson in that regard. That exercise that started as a civil attempt to call attention to gross human rights abuses by one arm of the police was later to degenerate to criminal attacks on police officers and police infrastructure. Having subdued the police and chased them out of the public space, agents of lawlessness took over. I remember meeting some corps members serving at a media organisation expressing joyful excitement at unfolding news that rioters were attacking government establishments including warehouses and looting allegedly hoarded COVID-19 palliative items. Their boss and I warned them that lawlessness profits no one and that while we may, at the beginning, think we are not affected, soon we will realize that truly lawlessness has no boundaries. Not long after, news came to these youngsters that hoodlums had blocked the roads to their homes and were harassing people. It was time to go home, and the wisdom in our admonition had started dawning on the now stranded corps members. While I support efforts (such as #EndSARS) that aim to correct institutional shortcomings, I would quickly withdraw my support once it becomes destructive. Our quest should be to cure the police of its ailment and make it stronger in protecting us and not to destroy it and leave us completely unprotected. The same applies to our public hospitals, civil service, electricity companies and other institutions; should we destroy them because they are inefficient? No, that will leave us worse off than we were.
That said, I only hope that we all must have learnt our lessons. Security is our collective duty, hence we should neither feel unconcerned nor happy when some elements are trying to undermine our collective security institutions, no matter their purported motive and how much we love their agenda .
Lastly, the government of Nigeria and governors of the southeast should not slumber. The challenge before them is an existential one – they are battling for control of public space with non-state actors with far-reaching political and economic implications. As it stands today, large expanses of the territory of the federation, from Zamfara to Borno, Kaduna to Anambra and Imo cannot be said to be fully governed by the state. The state must rise to the occasion and retake control. It must think outside the framework of its usual security procedures and do something different in order to produce a different result. Intelligence gathering must be prioritized to hand the initiative back to the security agencies. They should always be a step ahead of the criminals and not playing catch-up behind them.
Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria
I condemn non-state actors making life unbelievable for the masses. Be that as it may, most southerners would prefer any security arrangement in the region rather than have killer herdsmen cut a swathe through their farmlands.