Crying For The South-East

 By Casmir Igbokwe

Mr. Nduka Ozor is a fine gentleman from Agwa Community in Oguta Local Government Area (LGA) of Imo State. When he took the microphone to speak about the unlawful killings in his community, everybody listened attentively. Midway into his presentation, he broke down in tears.

International human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI), invited Ozor and some other stakeholders to share their experiences about the atrocities in the South-East region of Nigeria. In a report titled “A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in South-East Nigeria”, AI documented senseless killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests at the hands of gunmen, state-backed paramilitary outfits, vigilance groups, cult groups and criminal gangs in the South-East from 2021 to 2024. The report was launched in Lagos on Thursday, September 4, 2025.

Ozor became highly emotional when he spoke about how gunmen killed and decapitated many innocent people, including pregnant women, with impunity in Agwa.

“We know the gunmen. They are not unknown gunmen. They are people from our communities. But people are afraid to talk; when you talk, your name will be given to the gunmen, and you will be killed,” Ozor lamented. He said people had to pay about N500,000 to get permission from the gunmen to do burial or wedding ceremonies. “We are still trying to rebuild the community. But the lives lost can never be restored,” he cried.

The graphic details of Ozor’s account sent shivers down the spines of most listeners in Citi-Height Luxury Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. Particularly heart-breaking was the screen display of the mutilated body of a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police and lawyer, Christian Kpatuma, killed by these gunmen on February 2, 2022.

Kpatuma visited his hometown to offer pro bono legal service to a woman whose son was killed by cultists in the village. It was late to return to his base in Owerri. So, he decided to pass the night in the village at Mgbala Agwa. That was his greatest undoing. A group of over 30 cult boys were said to have invaded his house while still at his entrance, abducted him and took him into the bush. They decapitated him and dumped his mutilated body in front of his compound.

Later, the gunmen went into his larger family compound and led the deceased family members by gunpoint to where his body lay. Then, they boastfully proclaimed, “Here lies the corpse of your brother.” They were reportedly not masked and they are well known people. Some of them are from the same Mgbala Agwa and other communities in Agwa clan.

These same gunmen reportedly killed the traditional ruler of Obudi Agwa autonomous community, Eze Ignatius Asor, and two of his chiefs in his palace. As an eyewitness narrated to AI in Owerri, “On 14 November, 2022, while HRH Eze Ignatius Asor was in his palace with two visitors, a group of men, numbering about 30 or thereabouts, came in Sienna cars and other smaller buses, and swooped (on) the palace.

“Unfortunately, the Eze was not upstairs, he was in front of the palace hall. The gunmen swooped (on) the palace with guns. The palace gate is not too far from the gate. So, immediately they came into the compound, the king had no way of escape as he was in an open space. He was shot dead by the gunmen. While they were shooting him, they were shouting, ‘Eze (king) you will live forever!’ They shot him with over 16 bullets, even after he died, they kept on shooting him.”

Dominic Okoli, the Palace Secretary of Lilu Community in Ihiala LGA of Anambra State, gave his own account of how these gunmen turned his community and some others into ungoverned spaces. They sacked his traditional ruler, burnt down his palace, displaced residents and took total control of his community.

In another sad incident on May 15, 2022, gunmen abducted and later beheaded the lawmaker representing Aguata II Constituency in the Anambra State House of Assembly, Hon. Okechukwu Okoye, and his aide, Ulaevuchukwu Chiegboka. Their severed heads were later found at a bus terminal in Nnewi on May 21, 2022. 

There were many other killings. Some of them were perpetrated by state agents. Some state governments used Ebube Agu paramilitary force to harass and intimidate their opponents and critics. Established in April 2021, members of this state-backed force allegedly engaged in arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances and destruction of homes.

According to AI, Nigerian security agencies, including the military and the police, committed these same atrocities during military operations in the South-East. On June 18, 2023, security agents killed Okechukwu Umendu, a 65-year-old farmer from Okwudo village in Mgbala Agwa community over alleged membership of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). His widow and mother of five said security agents saw her husband walking along the road. Suddenly, they shot him from behind. He had no gun with him. She came back from the church that day to see her husband’s corpse on the corridor.

For Amaka, a 24-year-old resident of Emii Emekuku, in Owerri North LGA of Imo State, it was a devastating experience at the hands of security agents. She was four months pregnant when they arrested her on May 17, 2021. According to her, the Intelligence Response Team (IRT) squad came to her father’s house to arrest her because her fiancé was a suspected IPOB member. After beating and torturing Amaka and her father, they took them to the Anti-Kidnapping Unit of the Imo State Police Command (Tiger Base). There, they received more beatings.

To cut the long story short, the agents allegedly hit their foot on Amaka’s stomach and her placenta came out. She bled profusely, but her abductors did not care. She spent months in various detention camps in Owerri, Abuja and later ended up at the prison in Suleja, Niger State. It was in Suleja she was able to make calls and certain people later came for her release. Unfortunately, her 62-year-old father had died from the torture he received, two weeks after their detention. His house was also demolished by the IRT squad. His crime was not disclosing the whereabouts of his daughter’s fiancé, alleged to be an IPOB member. 

Many other people went missing without any trace. Many women were turned widows overnight. Many children became orphans simply because their breadwinners were suspected to be IPOB supporters. 

According to the director, Amnesty International Nigeria, Isa Sanusi, 1,844 people were killed in the South-East between January 2021 and June 2023. In Imo State, gunmen killed over 400 people between 2019 and 2021. Hundreds of people were arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared.   

Sanusi regretted, “The Nigerian authorities’ brutal clampdown on pro-Biafra protests from August 2015 plunged the South-East Region into an endless cycle of bloodshed, which has created a climate of fear and left many communities vulnerable.”

The crisis has scared many people away from the South-East. Some now conduct traditional marriages of their children or burial ceremonies in the cities outside the region rather than in their ancestral homes.

The sit-at-home order, which IPOB initiated but later called off, has continued and even worsened the precarious situation. Every Monday, most people avoid coming out to do their business or travel in and out of the South-East for fear of being attacked. This has cost the region trillions of naira. Between September 2021 and December 2022 alone, micro-businesses reportedly lost over N5 trillion.

Sadly, many victims remain abandoned. The people who lost their loved ones and properties are yet to get justice or any form of reparation.    

If the government cannot provide reparation for the victims, at least, it can guarantee and protect the right to life. We are not living in a jungle where might is right. No country is crime-free, but the major difference between a sane society and a jungle is that in the former, people who commit any crime receive the punishment they deserve.

The Federal Government, South-East governors and political elite, community leaders and every citizen and resident of the South-East must show interest in what is happening in the region. Vigilance groups should be well trained and equipped to effectively collaborate with other security agencies to tackle the problem. But they must act with the rules of engagement. Citizens should volunteer useful information to security agencies.

Barbaric killings anywhere diminish the humanity in all of us. This act of killing with impunity must stop!

*Igbokwe is a journalist and commentator on public issues