ANAMBRA: Wheeling And Dealing For Peace

By Emma Udeagha

A friend of mine who lives in Lagos calls every night just to ask how my day was. He thinks that there is war in Anambra State. Last week he called again, after the gory video of the dismembered body of the beheaded member of the Anambra State House of Assembly, Okechukwu Okoye, went viral. This time the distress in his voice was palpable. Emma, Pray you are safe in that dungeon?, he asked. Please, save me more nightmares, get out of that zoo now! My friend can be a tease but this particular one was like a shot in the arm. I knew why he was worried about my safety. It has to do with the worrisome security situation, the ongoing guerilla war in the Anambra, for which the state has continued to be in the news.

Until recently, Anambra was rated as one of the safest states in the country. Albeit, the enviable record has been wiped out and the story now sound more like old wive’s tale. Now, the once cherished sense of personal safety appears antiquated and supplanted by deep anxiety about crimes. These days, the fear of death inhabit every resident as many, mainly, security officials are killed, day after day.

Whichever part of the state anyone lives, every day seems to bring in another crop of lurid crimes. Even areas once considered relatively safe admit to having a haunting fear of crime and violence. The hoodlums, who operate like phantom armies, operate almost freely. They main, kill, kidnap innocent citizens, and disrupt economic activities in the State, especially in Nnewi, Onitsha, Ekwulobia, and Ihiala axis, in the State.

Satirists have made snide remarks about the dire situation. Were he alive, Chinua Achebe, would have deployed a harsher metaphor, than his ‘mad house’ characterization of Onitsha, to describe the current insecurity in the state. Only recently, a renowned academic and columnist, Olu Tunde Adeoye, writing in the weekend Vanguard of April two weeks ago, painted a melodramatic picture of the state of affairs when he advised ‘those who wished to visit any part of Anambra State to be sure to wear some armour on them’.

Instructively, Anambra was faced with this kind of strong dilemma under the leadership of former governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju. At the time, men and women ran into churches to get saved and to sleep at night and nobody could walk across the streets of Onitsha and other places with a polythene bag, without being attacked. The police and others, could not rise to the occasion because they lacked modern equipment compared to the superior weaponry of the armed robbers. Although, the security challenges of the two administrations are not exactly the same, but there is not one hundred naira difference of both periods. Those who have memories of what happened would recall that that of Mbadinuju era was the fallout of the Aguleri- Umueri communal war, and led to the introduction of the Bakassi Boys. Most of the war combatants suddenly became jobless, after the war and unfortunately turned to armed robbery and made the state a horror to live in.

On the other hand, the present lax security situation, has the imprimatur of those behind separatist agitations in the South East, who are, otherwise known as unknown gunmen or ungun known men.

Interestingly, at inception, the Bakassi Boys recorded some commendable achievements, but before long, the outfit deviated from their set objectives and became not only crude in their operations, but a weapon for fighting the opposition, until it was disbanded on September 24, 2002, following the confusion over the murder of some politicians in the State and Barrister Barnabas and his pregnant wife, Abigail.

The historical perspective is important in order to fully situate the present crisis in the State.

The question that readily arises is, what is the way out of this madness that has seemingly engulfed not just Anambra but most states in the South East?. Why have some youngmen elected to make crime a career of choice and what strategies exist for addressing this herculean challenge?.

Obviously, Governor Soludo, who was initially unsettled by the random killings, which many thought was a landmine laid on the path of his administration, being only a couple of months in office. Like a trojan, decided to enlist the authority of his government to rekindle citizens confidence, which was absent due to the reluctance of the immediate past administration to build on the crowning achievements of it’s predecessor. The governor, an expouser of won causes, who had earned himself the reputation of being a tough and a successful former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, felt strongly about the ‘war’. He therefore decided to invest his massive ego in its prosecution to avoid the humiliation of allowing criminals to overrun the state and ridicule his administration.
First, Soludo visited the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who has been in the custody of the Department of State Security, Abuja, an expression of togetherness, although the visit was less than helpful, as the onslaught continued.

Next the governor, in a statewide broadcast, announced a number of measures to fight off the rebellion and end the siege of the state. Soludo, In the broadcast, called for collective support to end the ugly security situation and imposed a curfew/restriction on the movement of certain categories of vehicles in parts of the State. He also announced a reward of One Million Naira for any information on those behind the mayhem and those producing dangerous drugs, including the one popularly called ‘Nkpulummili’.

The governor, no doubt scored the bull’s eye. His speech on how to end the crisis, one of the most curious speeches of his two months governorship, represented the touchstone of the governor’s commitment to ending the seeming ‘civil war’. Before his riot act to the ‘mutineers’ Soludo had extended the olive branch to those behind the crisis, to no avail.

Perhaps, one of the most significant aspects of the governor’s speech was the proposed strategies to root out the indiscriminate use and production of dangerous drugs in the State. By this, the governor clearly appreciates the fact that demand for hard drugs nurtures organized crimes.

However, arresting the ugly situation in Anambra state, should not be left for the government alone, it certainly calls for the pledge of active support of Community leaders and citizens, who should provide a useful conduit for information on criminal elements and situations, in their areas.

The youth should be top on the watchlist of the governor’s declared intention to ‘take back the state’. It is an open secret that membership of secret cults has become the ‘new normal’ among the youth. Many have joined neighbourhood cult groups and become involved in dangerous criminal activities. These young people, in their teens, or younger, crazily form gangs and begin dealing and using drugs and engaging in theft, burglary, armed robbery, gang fighting and hired assassination. They try to find security that they cannot find elsewhere and use axes, knives, guns, and other weapons to inflict terrible injuries on their rivals and sometimes, molest, rob, beat up and kill innocent people. Cult groups are now common-place and have grown stronger and richer. Thus, they are now almost everywhere and get away with most of their crimes, scot free. Who dares to face up to heavily armed youth and veterans of many armed combats? Not even the ill-equipped security men and local neighbourhood watch groups. Consequently, in Awka, Onitsha, Nnewi, Ihiala and indeed every part of the state, law abiding citizens have to expect all sorts of trouble, unless they honour and pay protection money to these felons, sometimes.

Therefore, all hands should be on deck to check the unacceptable crime situation in the State, since no one hardly escapes the effect of crime. Further to the various measures proposed, the State government should view the current situation as being much like a ‘civil war’ and therefore come out with more actions that will hit the criminal organisations and their sponsors hard, while the police and the local vigilante groups should be equipped and dispatched to patrol public buildings/ important areas to protect them from surprise attacks by the criminal elements. The state government should in addition to cracking down on organized crime from the outside, make effort to help those inside to get out of crime syndicates by creating hotlines to help gangsters who are trying to break free and are having hard time finding decent jobs, since once a criminal does not mean always a criminal.

Although, the state government, working with security agencies, can check the Anambra ‘bizarre’ situation, but certainly the problem won’t stop until parents stop it. Parents must at all times be aware of what their children feel, and what they do, who their friends are, where they go after school, and where they go every time and above all, advise them from time to time. They and the society do not have a chance if they do not take personal interest in the lives of our youth.