The situation in the Southeast is becoming a source of worry to well-meaning people in and outside the region. Daily, human beings are converted to mere statistics by enemies of the Nigerian state and people. The trend has continued unabated despite attempts by security agents to curb it.

Besides the killed and the maimed, many are being consigned to the heap of economic destitution as schools, shops, factories and general movements are prohibited every Monday. In addition, any day Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Eastern Security Network (ESN) is arraigned in court, economic activities are forbidden across the five states of the region. Anyone who disobeys the order pays with his or her life or limbs.

We join the apex Igbo socio-cultural group, Ohanaeze, in condemning the trend, and call on the sub-national governments in the area to step up efforts in mobilising against the nihilists, many of whom were not born before the 30-month gruesome civil war that spelt doom and retardation for the zone. The effects of that war are still felt today as it sowed division among Nigerians, poisoned social relations and has promoted suspicion in the country.

It might be frightening when Ohanaeze joins others not only in openly condemning the retarding actions of the anarchists, but deprecates it in the strongest terms as declaration of another civil war that must be swiftly checked. This is a wake-up call on the new administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his security chiefs. Previous authorities had failed to check the festering sore that later became cancer threatening to take down the whole people, especially those in Anambra, Enugu and Imo states.

There is a need to review the security system, both the kinetic and non-kinetic approaches for better results. When non-state actors determine when and how people should exercise their fundamental rights, it is an early sign that the state is about failing. This must be checked, if only to imbue confidence in citizens that the government is capable of protecting their lives and properties from attacks by rogue elements whose next action would be to impose taxes within the area. Already, the security forces are stretched thin engaging daring criminals in the Northeast, Northwest and parts of the Northcentral who, at a point, deposed and installed traditional rulers, imposed taxes and took whatever caught their fiendish fancies off hapless citizens.

It was former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Theophillus Danjuma, who once declared that no country can survive a second civil war. We hope current leaders would not allow this to happen under their watch as history would not be kind to whoever is in the saddle whenever this happens. All leaders and authorities, formal or informal, must be involved in efforts to bring the situation under control. The Southeast region is too important to be lost to a bunch of criminals who are out to test the strength of the state.

Mr. Simon Ekpa who seems to lead a more murderous faction of IPOB should be brought to book urgently. He cannot be allowed to stay comfortably in Finland preying on people’s ignorance and causing mayhem in the land. There is enough evidence to bring his nefarious activities to the attention of the Finnish authorities with a view to getting him repatriated to Nigeria to answer for his crimes. Nigeria is not so much a minion in diplomacy as not to know what to do in the circumstances. We have enough friends in the international system to run rings round the outlaw. When this is not done, it suggests to the people that they have been abandoned by their government.

Nigeria has lost so much human and material resources to the carnage in the Southeast such that no effort should be spared henceforth to bring perpetrators of the evil to book. When the state shows it is capable of drawing from its enormous resources to secure its territory and demonstrate that it has a monopoly of using force to enforce law and order, things will fall in place, and the feared slide into a civil war would be halted.

Nigeria, the famed giant of Africa by its population and resources, should no longer be depicted as a giant with clay feet.

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