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Out of Imo State
WITHOUT knowing that news bordering on the thrilling and salacious was about to be served up on Imo State, I had not too long ago challenged a friend to watch out for the next time news on or about the state will feature on the NTA networks news. It is not often that Imo State, which happens to be my state, gets featured on the NTA of for that matter Nigeria's growing number of television stations. I do not know why this is so. I cannot tell whether it is out of hatred, conspiracy or a complete lack of newsworthy events in the state.
This issue has been one of constant irritation to me. Because the absence of media focus on the state has been a major incentive for its misgovernance, a development now at its peak and which is not only crude in its procedures but also quite iniquitous in the outcomes it produces. Imo State is probably the most misgoverned in the whole of the country. Yet it is among the most 'peaceful'. But peace as I understand it in Imo State may just be the absence of tension which gives it a negative meaning. It is not the presence of justice which would have been positive. It is peace of the graveyard, the kind that requires just a little friction for it to be fractured and for violence to erupt. That people are minding their business is clearly, with regard to Imo State, not evidence that they are happy. It is rather testament to their resignation to divinity and fate.
Imo State is not an opposition state. It is bonafide a PDP-controlled state. That much is clear on the surface. But on further enquiry one would readily find out if the PDP status of the state is voluntary or related to the votes of the people between April 12 and May 3, 2003. Or whether the state is indeed a victim of gang-rape of the kind only the PDP, its god-fathers and god-sons know how to practise. Which makes one wonder if blacking the state out by the public and private electronic media is punishment for the state's forced surrender to rape.
But trust that news whenever it emanates from Imo State will tumble out much in the nature of an earthquake. It had happened before. The routine slaying of a groundnut hawking school boy within the precincts of a hotel in 1996 plunged this otherwise peaceful state into a state of shock which later translated to outrage and then violence. At the time, the state was also at peace. It was actually enjoying the kind of peace that it also currently enjoys.
Then, as now, people simply disappeared from the streets and could not be accounted for, for days and in some instances forever. Criminals held the state by the throat, driving the law abiding into hiding. Then, as now, the state government openly fraternised with the lawless and fraudulent. Just as it was recently in the news that thieves invaded a church cemetery near Owerri, the state capital and stole one corpse, worse things happened in the Imo State of 1996, poignantly demonstrated in several alleged instances when in broad day light snakes swallowed themselves up in the streets.
Then, as now, while these bizarre occurrences took place, citizens of the state also noticed the ascendance of little men who suddenly and inexplicably came by stupendous wealth which they flaunted about the various towns. These men broke the law with impunity, terrorised their environment and instilled fear in the hearts of many. By the time that young boy was killed and buried in a shallow grave and his head severed for ritual purposes, the state had had enough. The spontaneous eruption that gripped the state thereafter only underscored the level of public indignation to the assault on cherished social values by those small men who paraded the streets in state-of-the-art cars. In burning down houses suspected to have been built with blood money, the citizens of the state also chased away those who were menacing them. That incident now lives in most recent memory as the 'Otokoto' saga.
If information coming out of Imo State in recent times is anything to go by, the days of Otokoto may be back in the state. It appears the fraudsters have regrouped. The ritualists appear also to be through with their hibernation and have returned with a vengeance. And these two nefarious groups are now joined by ambitious politicians who have nothing but violence and anguish to offer the people of the state. As happened in 1996, the government machinery in Imo State appears to be leveraging criminals in the state who now strut their criminal stuff in and around it without any qualms of conscience. Before these little men of affluence and power, the law of the state and Nigeria lie prostrate.
In the last two years or so, the state has had its share of unresolved murders, some of them linked to the 2003 general elections. Citizens of Imo State are still waiting on the police to announce to them those behind the murder of Chief Ogbommaya Uche, who was gunning for a Senatorial seat before he was gunned down in 2002. Mr. Theodore Agwatu who once served as a Principal Secretary in one of the executive offices in the state was also murdered at about the same time. To date, the killers remain at large. Uche Ogbe, the only son of his mother and former lecturer at the Alvan Ikoku College of Education was matcheted to death early this year. The killers are yet to be found. Those living in Owerri attest to the fact that in the last one year several children and adults have disappeared without trace from the streets.
What was shown on NTA Newsline recently as coming out of Imo State may not rival the Otokoto episode in terms of its big bang effect. It nevertheless puts the state on the spot yet again for the wrong reasons, especially as a state where human life counts for nothing. It was reported that a former Ehime Mbano local government chairperson and others had been arrested for allegedly murdering a politician and his driver and burying them inside the septic tank of a building in Owerri. The chilling aspects of the story were further captured on camera: two skulls and some bones recovered from the said septic tank. Apparently, the tank was firmly cemented after the two men had been dragged therein to conceal the crime.
This incident happened in 2001. These two men were very well known to this writer prior to their disappearance. They hailed from Nsu in Ehime Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State. Chief Lawrence Iwuoha was a well known grassroots politician. He was fair in complexion (for which he was nicknamed 'White') and walked with a slight limp on one of his legs. He also made name as a baker and was actually alleged to have been killed under the subterfuge that he was going to be sold baking materials. When this writer first met him in 1998, he was the local government chairman of the now defunct United Nigeria Congress Party. His driver, Damian Anyanwu, killed along with him was also called 'Oluwa' and was an indigene of Umuezeala Nsu, the same village as this writer. In fact he and this writer were in primary school together in the 1970s.
The good thing about this crime which also was heading up unresolved until the police made a breakthrough recently is that the community from which the two gentlemen hailed can now end months of agony, and of hoping that they only just disappeared and were bound to come back some day. It is is also gratifying that the police, much maligned for its incompetence in the face of challenging situations as this, are in fact at the heart of this breakthrough. They have shown some professionalism which the public expects will be consolidated during the presentation of evidence at the trial of those now charged for the crime.
There is little doubt that the souls of men killed in circumstances similar to this case over the length and breadth of this country cry everyday for justice from this society. There are far too many unresolved criminal activities, not only murders, in Nigeria for it to have any semblance of peace or stability. And when crimes are committed and those involved can neither be found nor brought to justice, it leads to a cycle of crime at the level now generally witnessed in this country. One only needs to open an average Nigerian newspaper on a daily basis to know that the country is basically under the vice-grip of felons and anti-social elements.
What should worry every law abiding Nigerian is that these elements will not stop their nefarious activities until they are forced to do so by the fair, firm and non-discriminatory application of sanctions prescribed under our laws. Sadly, governments at various levels have abandoned this primary responsibility; hence the prevailing audacity and impunity with which criminals go about wreaking horror and pummelling the society.
The judiciary has a role to play in this case. What we have seen in this country over these years is that it is not enough merely to charge people suspected of crime before the courts without conducting the prosecution in a manner that lays the axe of justice where the offence is and respects the rights of those charged. But the judiciary in Imo State has demonstrated over and again its capacity to rise to occasions as presented by this sad case. The public expects that the case will be handled with dispatch and professionalism to lay permanently to rest the ghost of the dead and signal the return of government to its basic primary duty of maintaining law and order by rewarding civility and punishing crime. On its part, the police in Imo State needs to do more to unravel the catalogue of murders pending in its files as it has done in this case.
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