A civil society organisation and political advocacy group, IGN SPEAKERS (hereinafter referred to as THE SPEAKERS) has appealed to the Governor of Enugu State, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, to use his good offices to redress the lingering security crisis in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of the State.
In a letter signed by Mr. Felix Oguejiofor Abugu, a spokesman for the group and made available to WITHIN NIGERIA, THE SPEAKERS commended the Governor for the peace dividend he has delivered to Enugu State and people in the past seven and half years, urging him to apply the same principle he has used to sustain peace in most parts of Enugu since the advent of his administration in 2015, to deliver peace and security to the people of Igbo-Eze North in place of the biting insecurity and other sociopolitical crises currently devastating the LGA.
In the letter entitled ‘THAT YOUR GOVERNMENT MAY FIND THE HUMAN AND MATERIAL RESOURCES, AND THE POLITICAL WILL TO ADDRESS BURGEONING INSECURITY IN IGBO-EZE NORTH’, the group, which expressed support for every effort made by the Governor to contain the crisis in Eha-Amufu, Isi-Uzo Local Government Area of the State, also accused Igbo-Eze North’s political leadership of not doing enough to rid the LGA of the security challenges which “burgeoned under the current political leadership in the LGA.”
Below is the full text of the letter.
Dear Sir,
We are IGN SPEAKERS, a civil society organization and political advocacy group. We comprise mostly Enugu State indigenes of Igbo-Eze North (IGN) extraction, who desire to work with the government and other stakeholders in addressing the current insecurity, brutality against civilians and other sociopolitical and socioeconomic challenges facing parts of Nsukka in general and IGN in particular.
We are a non-partisan, non-religious and non-sectional group whose primary objective is the sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural development and progress of IGN.
As our name implies, we operate essentially through deployment of constructive communications around issues germane to the development of IGN to achieve our objective, hence this letter.
Permit us, therefore, to, first, commend you for the peace dividend that your administration has faithfully delivered to the good people of Enugu State in the past seven and half years.
We are happy that Enugu State under your watch in the past seven years plus is counted among the safest, most peaceful and harmonious States in Nigeria.
Although the situation in parts of the State has of recent become quite worrisome, that record of Enugu as a safe, peaceful and harmonious State is as yet undiminished even by the rumblings in communities in Eha-Amufu in Isi-Uzo Local Government Area of the State, where there have been reports of violent clashes among armed herdsmen, vigilantes and soldiers, resulting in deaths and destruction of property in the area. We commend every effort being made by your administration to find a lasting solution to the ugly situation in Eha-Amufu.
However, we are particularly worried by happenings in Igbo-Eze North. We are distressed to know that, currently, our local government area is unable to enjoy the peace and security that have been recognized by many as the hallmark of governance success in Enugu State, no thanks to the security and socio-political crises that have engulfed the LGA for some time now.
Your Excellency, we watch helplessly as our people are senselessly slaughtered almost on a daily basis by both state and non-state actors in our midst, youths indiscriminately rounded up, arrested and detained by security agents for weeks, even months, without trial, women molested, raped and tortured for daring to protest against insecurity and indiscriminate arrests of their children while businesses, among other untoward developments in the LGA, routinely shut down and relocate from Igbo-Eze North thereby causing untold hardships among our people.
The testimony of an eyewitness which we reflected in a recent report we published about a protest staged against insecurity in Igbo-Eze North by women drawn from different communities in the LGA bears us out. She lamented: “The women who chanted solidarity songs in Igbo demanded the stoppage of extra-judicial killing of their sons (who, they alleged, are often branded IPOB followers or members before being neutralized), and other extra- judicial killings going on in IGN.”
In that report, we also noted that the women’s protest “came against the backdrop of a deteriorating security situation in IGN where corpses of youths are routinely picked up from bush paths and other major roads almost on a daily basis.”
That is the current pathetic situation in Igbo-Eze North, an otherwise boisterous, enterprising and peaceful community now a bleeding shadow of its former self. This is the sad story of a progressive community of which you have been an active part as a political leader and legislative representative in the past 20 years, but which has now become a community of strife, bloodshed and deaths, due, in part, to the shenanigans of over-ambitious local politicians.
It is in the light of the foregoing that we in IGN SPEAKERS make this open appeal to Your Excellency, to use your good offices to redress the ugly security situation in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of our dear State, particularly in Enugu-Ezike town.
Sir, we do not claim to know when things started falling apart in IGN. Nor do we even want to delve into all that. We are content that as an IGN indigene by political constituency and the Governor and Chief Security Officer of Enugu State to which we all belong and pay allegiance, you would, acting on the information routinely made available to your office by National Intelligence, know what happened or how it all started. What is important is that both Enugu and Ogrute have had to contend with a burgeoning insecurity in IGN in the past one year or a little more.
We equally do not wish to hazard any guess as to the dramatis personae in this whole IGN insecurity saga. This, again, is because we know that National Intelligence would furnish you with such information as a matter of routine – information in terms of the masterminds of insecurity in the LGA and or the actual ‘hard-men’.
All we do know and can say and are brooding over, is that the security crisis in Igbo-Eze North is nothing more than a foreboding product of vaulting ambitions hidden under the odium of destructive politics. And this, we dare say, isn’t a crisis too hard for the government to resolve within the shortest possible time.
It means that if the people whose political exertions brought this crisis upon our people are known (as indeed they are), then the crisis can be easily resolved through a government-inspired robust engagement with the feuding parties, or even through arm-twisting them to come to terms with the imperative of reconciliation and peaceful settlement of their differences so IGN can be free. The LGA just cannot continue to be slave to anyone or group’s ambition, Sir.
What we have since realized is that those whose responsibility it is to take steps towards resolving the lingering crisis appear unwilling to do so. Why? Because it does seem convenient for them to hide under your cover as the Chief Security Officer of the State on whose table the buck stops, to continue stoking the fire of insecurity in IGN with practically no accusing fingers pointing at them. Such people must not be allowed to eat their cake and have it. For, while their ‘blackmail’ may be ‘constitutional’, Lion Building must not necessarily succumb to it just because local politicians can’t get their acts together.
You must, therefore, break the impasse, Your Excellency, by getting the dramatis personae in the whole IGN insecurity saga to account for their actions or inactions that may have aided the LGA’s inexorable fall into its current mess. Let every man carry his can.
Your Excellency may also wish to adopt the following other measures which we believe could help the administration redress the escalating insecurity in IGN.
These, among others, include:
1) De-militarization of IGN. The high security presence in IGN, while not entirely unwholesome, has, however, had the opposite effect of heightening tension in the communities, increasing chances of constant clashes between state and non-state actors and, needless to say, making reconciliation between the feuding parties most improbable. With all sense of responsibility, we dare to say that more, mainly innocent people, have died since sundry security forces, including masked men of Ebubeagu, were deployed to IGN to maintain law and order, than hitherto thought possible.
2) Compelling (or, well, persuading) the political godfathers to meet their obligations, if any, to any persons or group, which failure to meet ab-initio may have triggered the current crisis.
3) Resolution of the supremacy battle between the ‘Boys’ who support the ‘government’, that is, the ‘Boys’ in the faction loyal to the political ‘godfathers’ who now have the upper hand in the raging ‘war’, and those opposed to the ‘godfathers’ for allegedly shunting them out of line, a reason they now insist on a pound of flesh.
4) Granting amnesty to the ‘angry Boys’ and, as late as it may be for your administration, emplacement of a sustainable and positive outreach programme for the affected youth who might be tempted to engage in some unsuitable sociopolitical activities.
5) According the traditional criminal justice administration of information gathering, investigation, arrest and trial precedence over the current seeming jungle justice system that appears to encourage extra-judicial killing. This way, aggrieved persons would get justice and, consequently, would no longer react to any hints of arbitrariness by taking the law into their hands.
6) Last but not the least, Your Excellency should consider ordering all political office holders from IGN back to IGN so they can work in collaboration with all other stakeholders – traditional rulers, the clergy, others – towards genuine peace and reconciliation in the LGA. Right now, most of them have practically run away from the LGA and could, who knows, be fueling the insecurity at home through their boys!
In conclusion, permit us to emphasize, Your Excellency, that the security crisis in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State is not exactly an intractable problem. In fact, if anything, it is easily resolvable through the alternate dispute resolution channels of confession, dialogue and reconciliation, which only a purposive action by your government can make possible.
We must not succumb to the current blackmail of ‘fire for fire’ as the ultimate solution to the crisis. If we do, the insecurity in Igbo-Eze North and related socioeconomic crises might just get worse.
Your Excellency must not allow your administration to end on such a negative note in a local government that you have had the privilege of serving as its Member of the House of Representatives for all of 12 years!
We hope that you will find our intervention in order.
Thank you for your time, Sir.