Uromi Incident: Failure of Security

Emmanuel Onwubiko 

Introduction 

The very sad mob attack on some alleged Northern travelling hunters, who were reportedly found with dane guns by the vigilantes in Uromi Edo State, can be attributed to the rapidly declining quality of security architecture in the country. Edo State specifically has been turned into a killing field by mostly armed Northern terrorists masquerading as herders, and the security forces have failed to combat these attacks and bring offenders to justice. 

Pertinent Questions 

This is so, for a number of fundamental reasons. The first one is to inquire into how a large group of men in a truck, travelled all the way from PortHarcourt in Rivers State to Edo State which is a considerable long distance, but yet these travellers were never intercepted by the security forces who often mount hundreds of road blocks, particularly in Southern Nigeria, and are often accused of extorting travellers and residents of South East who are going about their businesses. 

The second question is to ask if these travelling hunters who were said to be returning to Kano from Rivers for the Sallah festivities, went along with their arms and ammunition on the highway in this period of heightened state of insecurity. Are these travellers not resident in Rivers State? 

Thirdly, why did it take a long time for the Police in Uromi to intervene, or is it that there is no Police station or unit operating in Uromi which by all standards is not a village as such? The problem of lack of efficient and effective policing in Nigeria, can be found in the high number of armed Police operatives attached to politically exposed public office holders. Also, here in our country, once you manage to become rich by any conceivable means, you can literally buy your security by bribing the Police Commissioners in the State commands to deploy any number of armed Police operatives, that you can pay the big men in the Police to have. So in effect, the Police operatives available for the real job of combating criminality in the towns, villages and urban city centres are so few that it becomes increasing impossible to have them respond to distress calls in good time. 

There is also this angle of the spectacular failure of intelligence and security architecture in the sense that the Department of State Services (DSS) right from Port Harcourt  to Edo State couldn’t get the intelligence that ought to reveal to them that a group of men who left such a commercially viable city of Port Harcourt enroute Kano, and who would go through several States were actually conveying weapons, even if these are dane guns. 

Effect of Use of Lethal Weapons by Security Against the People

There was a claim that AK-49 rifle was seen amongst the concealed weapons in the possession of these travelling ‘hunters’. This is however, not any justification for the lynch mob attack and killings of the persons. 

There is also a nexus between the rise in the use of lynch mob tactics of combatting crimes by the people who feel abandoned by the publicly funded security forces, and the frequent use of lethal weapons to quell peaceful protests by civilians all around the country. 

So, we can as well blame the security forces including the President who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, for deciding that the best approach to control protests is to deploy armed operatives who easily use lethal weapons by soldiers and Police in the bid to quell peaceful assembly.  

This is the primary source of encouragement for the rest of the Nigerian people who often think that the quickest way to deliver justice to suspected criminals is not to take such persons to the Police or the law enforcement agencies, but rather, to resort to self help measures since the people often witness how Soldiers and Police easily open fire using lethal weapons against civilians who are simply out in the streets of Nigeria to protest. 

This Uromi incident took place a few months after Soldiers and Police were deployed, to quell peaceful nationwide protests in August of last year. It would be recalled that the security forces deployed lethal weapons and crude force, against the largely peaceful protesting Nigerian youths who turned up to denounce bad government and the cost of living crisis. 

The Uromi incident happened a few days apart from the violent attacks of Soldiers against the protesting Islamic sectarian group known as Shiite, who were on procession after the Ramadan fast to protest against the Israeli killings of children in Gaza Palestinian homes. This informed the reason why the pro-democracy and civil rights advocacy group: Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) had condemned the penultimate weekend’s violent crackdown by the Nigeria Army on the procession staged in Abuja by the Shiites, in which over a dozen persons were killed, just as the Rights group expressed shock and consternation at the gruesome mass murder of a group of travelling hunters mistaken for kidnappers in Edo State and massacred by vigilante members.

HURIWA said it is so unfortunate that Nigeria has become the killing field, whereby armed State and non-State actors are going about taking away precious lives of mostly innocent citizens, even as the Rights group wondered how and why the Government in Abuja has often permitted the military and Police to use lethal weapons and live bullets, instead of water canons and rubber bullets to break up demonstrations staged by citizens.  

HURIWA said the rampant deployment of armed security forces to use weapons of death to quell civil protests, processions, demonstrations or even peaceful assembly, is what has provided the needed motivation for armed non-State actors to continue to kill citizens at the slightest opportunity available to them. 

HURIWA recalled that clashes between protesters and Army at a march by a Shiite group in Nigeria, left a dozen people dead, according to a Government intelligence report seen by AFP on Saturday. Eleven protesters and one soldier were killed, the report said, at a pro-Palestinian demonstration held by the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) in the capital Abuja. Amnesty International’s Nigeria Branch said soldiers fired live rounds at the protesters. The IMN has been outlawed by Nigerian authorities, for advocating an Islamic revolution in the West African nation. However, at the time of its banning, in 2019, researchers characterised it as more interested in protest than political violence.

Barbaric Uromi Mob Attack

Besides, at least seven suspected kidnappers were set ablaze and killed in a “barbaric” mob attack in Nigeria’s Southern town of Uromi, the Edo Governor said. Governor Monday Okpebholo condemned the mob killing of the individuals, pledging that those responsible would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the victims, identified as Northern Hausa hunters, were stopped by local security while travelling in a commercial truck. A search of the vehicle uncovered guns, triggering a mob attack by residents who accused them of being kidnappers and Fulani herdsmen.

HURIWA Condemns this unlawful killings of citizens just on mere and unsubstantiated allegations that they were kidnappers. “If they were kidnappers, why not hand them over to the Nigeria Police for the necessary legal prosecution?”

HURIWA said: “This kind of mob killing is what we have consistently condemned, and this is why we think the Federal Government should not flippantly permit armed security forces to open fire on civilian protesters, as we have continued to witness since President Tinubu assumed office. His administration has shown zero-tolerance for civil protests of any genre, and has often deployed armed security forces to use maximum and deadly force to quell the protests leading to fatalities. 

“These State sponsored killings of civilian protesters, are exactly what motivate mobs and armed non-State actors to embark on instantaneous killings of persons suspected of committing a crime, either wrongly or rightly. Government must become a respecter of the sanctity of human life. We call on the Edo State Government to prosecute and punish the killers of these travelling hunters. 

“We appeal to opinion leaders in the North, to stop ethnicising this criminality of mass murder of hunters. This crude crime is not something that we should look at, from the prism of ethnic colouration. We must not instigate reprisals with the panicky and ethnicity coloured reactions, the leaders from a section of Nigeria give to this act of despicable criminality. Let us condemn criminality, but let us not encourage reprisal killing of Southerners residing in the North by the way we paint this crime, as if it is South versus North. The crime is reprehensible and is not a war between sections of Nigeria, but between forces of good and evil which the law enforcement agencies should be allowed to handle.

Curbing Reprisals

On the best way to curb or stop reprisals, HURIWA called on the DSS and the National Security Adviser, to fish out the miscreants and outlaws in Northern Nigeria who are making videos being posted on social media calling for Northern Muslims to attack Christians and Southerners living in the North.  

In a media statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA warned that should the miscreants in the North make good their openly canvassed warmongering, the consequences would be far-reaching as the vicious circle of reprisals all over the South could unleash more violence. The security forces should make hay whilst the sun shines, and should chase these black goats now before the night arrives. 

HURIWA said: “The media is replete with stories about certain identified miscreants operating from locations in the North of Nigeria, who are are circulating incendiary and divisive hate-filled messages through videos posted on social media advocating that Southerners and Christians residing in the North should be attacked as a revenge for the killings of some travelling ‘hunters’ in in Uromi Edo State. 

“We are shocked that the DSS or the office of the National Security Adviser have maintained a frightening but loud silence about these ominous and warmongering messages, just as the security forces have, so far, not moved in to arrest and prevent the threats from coming to fruition. Or are the security forces waiting to see if those threatening will make good their threats, before they are decisively taken out and dealt the severest blow in line with the due process of the law?”

HURIWA recalled that a man from Northern Nigeria has issued a 48-hour ultimatum to President Bola Tinubu and the Edo Governor, demanding swift action to identify and apprehend those responsible for the killing of 16 Northerners in Uromi, Edo State. In a video seen by the media on Tuesday, he threatened that failure to do so would lead to retaliatory attacks against Southerners residing in the North.

In the three-minute, 30-second video obtained, the unidentified man expressed his concerns over the killings, stating that Northerners wouldn’t remain patient in the face of such attacks. He implied that any reprisals in the North, should be blamed on Southerners.

Reacting, HURIWA warned that the DSS and other intelligence agencies, must swiftly move to arrest these persons instigating others and actually threatening to orchestrate a bloody revenge on Southerners living in the North and bring them to book. The Rights group said these threats are real, must be taken seriously and nipped in the bud before they are actualised. 

Emmanuel Onwubiko,  Founder, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA); former National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria