SOUTHEAST GUNMEN AND THE MILITARY

The brazen attack on the security men is one too many

In a grim replay of the gruesome murder of 17 soldiers in Otuama, Delta State, five soldiers deployed to enforce peace and protect the citizens were last Thursday killed in Obingwa local government area of Abia State by some unknown gunmen. The assailants reportedly sprang the surprise attack on the troops at a military checkpoint abutting the Aba metropolis. Thereafter, they burnt down security patrol vehicles and grounded activities in most towns of the Southeast states. This is particularly worrisome because it signifies a tendency towards anarchy.  While we commiserate with the families of the victims, and the military high command, we condemn this vicious attack as one too many, and urge a thorough investigation to unmask the culprits.

Though the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is yet to claim responsibility for the attack, the development came following the warning to the people of the Southeast to stay indoors on May 30, to mark ‘Biafra Day’. In the process of driving home their grievances, members of IPOB factions have in recent years taken actions that amount to challenging the sovereign integrity of the Nigerian federation. Over the years, Police installations have been bombed. Security personnel have been killed. Expectedly, fear and tension are rife in the entire region, particularly in the commercial centre of Aba and environs, after the military authorities vowed to avenge the killings. While we expect the military to do what is right, the Abia State Government has responded well by placing a N25 million bounty for useful information that could lead to the arrest of any of the criminals.

One aspect of the IPOB protests that has attracted severe criticism is the illegal imposition of a weekly ‘sit at home’ order throughout the Southeast. During the lockdowns, usually every Monday, businesses, offices, banks, markets, and other essential services are compelled to remain closed. Urban streets, interstate highways and sometimes schools are usually deserted. On such days, an eerie silence overcomes the zone and creates an atmosphere of an undeclared emergency resembling a state of war. Last Thursday, many students in the Southeast could not sit for their West African Schol Certificate Examinations (WASCE) as a result of the directive. Meanwhile, between enforcement of supposed IPOB wishes and involvement in petty crimes, the dividing line is often thin and frequently breached. For the security agencies, enforcement of citizens’ rights to free movement gets entangled with curbing potentially treasonous escapades. 

A more worrisome aspect of the sit-at-home regime, as it did last Thursday, has been a colossal decline in business transactions and general shrinkage of economic opportunities. The net loss to the economies of the affected states has been calculated in trillions of Naira. The extensive economic haemorrhage is multiplied by the fact that most citizens in the Southeast operate in the informal sector as traders, shop owners, artisans, craftsmen, industrialists, wholesalers, and retailers of a motley of merchandise.

Shutting down the economic space and closing schools in the entire zone may have been IPOB’s most effective way of popularising its grievances. But people complied on the sit-at-home lockdown days not necessarily in willing obedience to IPOB and its separatist argument but rather because they were mostly afraid for their lives and the safety of their property from rough enforcers, violent vigilantes, and plain thugs. To compel the citizenry to go about their normal legitimate undertakings, the security forces often come into violent confrontation with these armed miscreants.

In the process several innocent lives have been lost just as enforcers of the order have razed houses, vehicles and destroyed the means of livelihood of people. The illusion of dominance by armed young men who terrorized vulnerable neighbourhoods was mistaken for the reality of territorial control, which it was not. Progressively, small bands of the formerly semi-homogenous group began to function with increasing autonomy. Then, individuals and small groups with criminal motives began to cash in on the apparent air of lawlessness.  

While a combined technique of intelligence and law enforcement may help in containing the resurgence of criminality, it is also perhaps appropriate, like the governors, Ohaneze N’digbo, and others have suggested, there is need to look beyond the legal to the political in resolving the Nnamdi Kanu conundrum.