ANY hope that the internecine bloodletting in the South-East will diminish soon seems to be vanishing. Brazenly, sophisticatedly armed non-state actors, whose real identity is still a subject of debate, attack citizens and security agents and formations frequently in the region. On January 14, such violence reared its head again in Imo State. The raiders invaded the Mgbidi Divisional Police HQs, killed an inspector and injured another officer. This situation is very terrifying for the residents, the region’s economy and society at large.

Several incidents in the first weeks of 2022 depict the unfolding tragedy. A week before the Mgbidi attack, gunmen stormed the Ideato South Local Government Area police HQs in Dikenafai, Imo. The gangsters destroyed the building with explosives, setting free detained persons. After wild shootings on January 9, a traditional ruler was kidnapped at Ubomiri in Mbaitoli LGA of Imo. One person was killed, and two others were injured in the mayhem. On the heels of that, Lawman Duruji, a former speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, was abducted in Ehime LGA. He regained his freedom a few days later.

Others were not so lucky. With large-scale arson by some elements enforcing the sit-at-home order levied by the Indigenous People of Biafra, there is real fear that the violence might yet degenerate to an all-out conflagration. In December, gunmen shot dead two police officers and burnt their patrol van at a checkpoint in Idemili North LGA of Anambra State. That was a month before the abduction of the traditional ruler of Ogwaniocha in Anambra, Oliver Nnaji. He was reportedly beheaded. The Special Force Squad of the Nigerian Navy has since arrested five suspects in the case.

Headlined by kidnapping, robbery, arson and sporadic attacks on police/military formations, insecurity has escalated since the last quarter of 2020 in the South-East. Major attacks on the prisons and police headquarters in Owerri, the Imo capital, in which hundreds of inmates were freed, and abduction and killing of monarchs, have sent frightening tremors throughout the region.

In response, the security agencies, who blame the separatist group, IPOB and its military wing, the Eastern Security Network, have retaliated with brutal force, resulting in near-anarchy. This has not decreased the violence. Minor incidents trigger killings and arson. The more the security agents maltreat the people, the more the bloodletting.

In all, the police say 21 officers were killed in Imo between June and August 2021. A September 2021 report by Amnesty International said that state agencies killed 115 persons between March and June 2021, some of them innocent. Rather than serve as a solution, extra-judicial killings have complicated security issues.

The killings are undefined: they affect the masses, the influential and even monarchs. In Enugu State, Stanley Nnaji, a retired Enugu State High Court judge, was brutally murdered in May 2021. In July, Ifeanyi Okeke, an auto magnate, was slaughtered. Okeke’s killing was followed by that of Samuel Ndubuisi, a professor and the executive director of the Scientific Equipment Development Institute, who was gunned down on the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway.

The callous killing of Chike Akunyili in September without provocation is a sign of the wanton destruction the violence has wrought in Igboland. It is comparable to the murder of two monarchs in the Njaba LGA of Imo State last October. An independent tally by The PUNCH estimated that 255 persons lost their lives in the violence between February and October 2021. That is a horribly high toll.

Efforts by the political leaders, including the five state governors in the region to stem the bloody tide, have not succeeded. Politics and the denial of the place of IPOB in the wider Igbo agitation for self-determination devalue these efforts. It is like the locals have more faith in IPOB than the political masters. One effect of this is to render the regional security outfit, Ebube Agu, toothless. It needs coordination, funding and equipping to breathe new life into the region’s security.

The real issue here is to pinpoint the source of the bloodletting. The Nigerian state hastily traces it to IPOB. On many occasions, IPOB denies it, saying it only seeks to secede from Nigeria and wants its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, released from detention by the Federal Government. It argues that it is being undermined by criminals, who carry out their activities using the IPOB name as a cover. The truth probably lies in between. It is the responsibility of the intelligence agencies and the state governors to ascertain the truth and find a lasting solution.

For the governors, they must acknowledge their failure in protecting the region. This has alienated them from those they purport to serve and elevated the militant IPOB in the minds of the people. They should discover practical ways to close the trust gap between them and their communities.

Agitation for secession is not a bad thing, but it needs not be violent. Scotland is planning a second referendum to leave the United Kingdom; the initial one in 2014 failed by a 55 to 45 per cent vote in favour of the ‘remain’ bloc. In Spain, political leaders persuaded the Basque separatist movement to drop its armed struggle in 2011, part of the negotiations with the Spanish authorities on secession. With their political clout, the governors and the South-East elite can put pressure on IPOB to commence real negotiations on its secessionist agenda. In this atmosphere, gun violence will recede. They need to muster the political will to drive the Ebube Agu project and protect their people.

Currently, the region is awash with illicit weapons. This abets the wanton bloodshed there. On its part, the Federal Government, which controls the security system, should deescalate the violence by cutting off arms supply to the criminals and employ effective strategic means to mop up the arms in circulation. Instead of extra-judicial killings, the security agencies should deploy proper investigation and prosecution of criminals.

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