By Obi Nwakanma
The five governors of the South East of Nigeria met in Enugu last week to deliberate on the security situation of the region. The impact of the now infamous “Sit-at-Home” forced on the South East has taken its toll, and the chickens have come home to roost. The economic and social life of the South East has taken such a hit and has been damaged almost irretrievably.
Against the background of the South East governors meeting are videos emerging of Asari Dokubo’s claims and counter claims, in interviews granted to television stations, the recent being with Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye, in which he plainly accepted that he owned and ran a private Army which had been contracted by the Federal Government to engage in Black Ops for the government.
Asari’s contract clearly was to do what government cannot
legitimately do, include kill innocent Nigerians, and subvert an entire region,
and provide the Buhari administration ultimate deniability. But Asari is
squealing. He even claims, and people in the South East have known this for a
long time that he works in partnership with the Nigerian military. The Unknown
Gunmen had tactical help and disappeared into military barracks which was how they remained “invisible” and protected.
But of course, the Nigerian
military has issued a statement denying partnership with Asari Dokubo’s private
army, or any knowledge of the nature of its contracts with Buhari’s NSA. All
one can say at this point is, weird! But how did we get here? What road led to
this situation where the South East, once Nigeria’s most peaceful and
productive region, succumbed and slipped to normlessness?
For years, Nigerians were familiar with the kidnappings in the Niger Delta, the assassinations and human trafficking in the South West; the rise of Boko Haram and terrorism in the North of Nigeria. In the period, the South East seemed almost inured from these degeneracy, and contended only with petty thievery, mercantile con, and such like. Stuff for beginners.
As a matter of fact, South Easterners resisted and
rose vehemently against the rise of the “Bakassi Boys” – a militia raised by
the governors in the South East to combat incipient criminality in places like
Aba and Onitsha. The “Bakassi Boys” were effective, but they came with a certain
level of brutality which disenchanted the Easterners who feared that they were
becoming uncontrollable laws unto themselves. They forced the governors to
dismantle the “Bakassi Boys,” because those boys were asserting extra-judicial
authority and growing beyond their breeches.
So, how did the Igbo allow the
so-called IPOB and ESN to impose themselves on the South East, forcing them to
hide in their homes every Monday? The fact is, it was neither the IPOB nor the
ESN, whose leaders have consistently, vehemently denied any involvements in the
killings and the forced confinements in the East. They have consistently asked
this question: what do we stand to gain in the violence in the East? The fact
is that “insecurity in the South East” is the doing of some dark force
which had the backings of the Buhari government. The story began with the
election of Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
The South East voters, mostly
Igbo, did not trust Buhari, both in his ability to govern a multi-ethnic nation
like Nigeria, and in his narrow politics. This mistrust of Buhari goes way back
to Buhari’s participation in the July 1966 coup and the organized massacre of
the Igbo. Buhari was also a remorseless combatant in the civil war which the
Igbo fought against the federation of Nigeria. Mr. Buhari did not seem to have
overcome the psychological effects of that war. Even though he seemed to have
made moves to work with Igbo like Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Chuba Okadigbo, and
Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, the Igbo voters rejected him consistently at the polls.
It has been said of Buhari by
those who know him intimately, that he never forgives a slight. And so, the man
never hid behind niceties when he declared his intentions to discriminate
against those who gave him only 5% of the votes in favor of those who gave him
75%. Buhari put this into play very brazenly from the moment of his
inauguration: he established of policy of discrimination and containment
of the Igbo. He isolated them from the commonwealth. He did not appoint any
Igbo to his Executive office. None to his security staff. There was no Igbo in
public policy in the Presidency.
To drive home his disdain, he
only made an Igbo the Photographer of Aso Rock. The symbolism was acute: the
Igbo were to be mere observers, while others, particularly his kinsmen were the
real actors of power. He basically gave the South East, the middle finger.
Seeing the trajectory of the Buhari administration, within months, young Igbo
went to the streets and mounted street protests against Buhari’s policy of discrimination.
Rather than act as the leader of
the nation, and call these young protesters in for rapprochement, Buhari sent
in policemen and soldiers, and ordered them to shoot at peaceful protesters
with live bullets. Neither the National Assembly, nor the governments of the
South East and the South-South states called the president to order on the
needless use of force and killings of unarmed youth, mostly Igbo protesting in
Enugu, Aba, Onitsha, Port-Harcourt, and Asaba. Young Igbo men and women were shot
like dogs on the street for protesting the Buhari policies.
The most egregious was the killing of a young woman on the street in
Onitsha. But rather than drive them under, these killings enraged these young
Igbo protesters, who said, “ok, if you do not want us in Nigeria, and guarantee
our rights as Nigerian citizens, let us go and revive the sovereign state of
Biafra. In fact, call a referendum!” they insisted. It was a sharp about-turn
for Nnamdi Kanu, hitherto a convinced Nigerian nationalist and campaigner for
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as president. But perceiving the situation of the Igbo
of the South East under Buhari as untenable, Nnamdi Kanu became a convinced
Biafran activist.
These killings, and the
unwarranted use of force against peaceful street protests led these Bafran
activists to adopt another peaceful, non-violent method of protest: “the sit-at
home” protest, to demonstrate non-violent support for Nnamdi Kanu, who had been
extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya. The IPOB announced it, and it was
heeded without force or compulsion from Port-Harcourt to Asaba. It was a wild
and unanticipated success which shocked the Buhari government, and challenged
its own narrative of IPOB as a terrorist organization. But policy set down by
Britain to recognize and grant asylum to pro-Biafran activists triggered the
violent reaction by the Buhari government and the use of Black Ops to ignite
violence in the East and tar IPOB as a violent terrorist organization. What has
been happening in the South-East is a low intensity war organized and executed
by Buhari’s NSA.
To discredit the Biafran
agitators, and turn hearts and minds against them, they used lowball methods,
scaled it up, and turned a peaceful protest into a violent and coercive
protest. Buhari’s security agents broke into Maximum security prisons in Owerri
and Abuja, freed all sorts of criminals, including armed robbers and murderers,
and unleashed them on the South East. They recruited a low life called Asari
Dokubo, armed him, and gave him the charge of these cretins to harass and
violate the South-East.
Dokubo’s ragtag army of
ex-bandits, criminals, junkies, creek rats, and such like have laid siege on
the South-East, under the guide and tactical partnership with the military who
have very clearly provided them coverage, though they now deny it. From the
contours of the statements made by Asari Dokubo in his various interviews, it
seems all too clear now that Asari Dokubo and his Army are the Unknown Gunmen
who have been operating in the South East; causing mayhem, and doing contract
killing of the Igbo of the South East on behalf of the Buhari
administration.
This ostensibly to offer them
deniability from the stark fallouts of that policy. The facts are only just
emerging, and I hope that the governors of the South East meeting this past
week on the security of the South East factored these revelations in their
discussion. It is urgent and imperative for the governors of the South East to
raise a petition before the Council of state, and the Representatives of the
South Eastern states to call for the National Assembly to use its investigative
powers to investigate former President Buhari, his NSA, and ascertain the
extent of the involvement of the Nigerian military and other security agencies
in the quite extraordinary illegal use of a private army to carry out
extraordinary subversion of a federating region of Nigeria under guise of
fighting Biafran separatists.
What funds were used? Did the
National Assembly sign off on these operations that quite clearly violate the
constitution of Nigeria? These revelations should necessitate the trial and
jailing of the ex-president and whoever participated in this scandalous misuse
of power and the levying of internal war against a constituent part of Nigeria,
which has turned the South East into an economic and social wasteland. Dokubo’s
private Army is a very dangerous development.
, and he must answer to the
unsolved killings, like the death of the Port-Harcourt real estate mogul, Gabe
Ofoma, who was killed on his way back to Port-Harcourt after a weekend in his
Nnewi country home, and Dr. Chike Akunyili, husband of Dora Akunyili. Asari
Dokubo must account for them, and that private Army must be disbanded summarily
and contained.
*Dr.
Nwakanma is US-based poet, academic and public intellectuals
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