In Southeast Nigeria, amidst a sprawling violence that harks back to the worst atrocities of the Nigerian Civil War, there is a resurgence of some of the crimes that were considered plain abominable.
A region of memories firmed up by fratricide is again being forced to relive the soundbites of those bloody days when bit by bit the spirit of a people was butchered.
However, it is a region that has always managed to bounce back. In fact, there must be some kind of unbreakable fortitude that is inherent in the people of the Southeast that enables them to always recover no matter how bent or broken they get.
This fortitude has been especially exhibited since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power and succeeded in rousing the sleeping dogs of the Southeast with his exclusionary brand of politics and administration.
Nnamdi Kanu may be incarcerated by the Department of State Services in Abuja but like a mighty shark prowling an ocean, he is still able to send ripples rattling through the Southeast.
For years, he successfully molded out of the supposed marginalization of the Southeast the manacles that have since become fastened around mutual and interethnic trust in Nigeria.
When he successfully landed himself in hot water with the state resulting in his prosecution for terrorism, his popularity only soared.
He managed to escape the country while on trial and bail. When he was rearrested in Kenya and nicodemously bundled back to Nigeria in 2021, the stage was set for the storms that have since continued to wash over the Southeast.
The group he leads, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had been unequivocal in their demand for his release. To press home the urgency of its point, a string of severe measures has been adopted in the Southeast. The most oppressive so far has been the sit-at-home observed every Monday and whenever the group orders.
While the residents of the region have groaned at what the weekly sit-at-home has meant for their lives and livelihoods, they have ground their teeth at the insecurity that since engulfed the region.
Multiple deadly attacks have since been recorded in the Southeast. Security personnel as well as civilians have been killed. Residential homes as well as public buildings have been torched. Many people have been abducted for ransom. All these have led to genuine fears over the conduct of the 2023 elections.
But no matter how many people are killed, shock always manages a fresh assault each time one more person is killed. Thus, it was great shock that greeted the residents of the Southeast particularly the good people of Imo State when Christopher Ohizu, the Sole Administrator of Ideato North Local Government Area of Imo State was beheaded by his captors days after he was abducted. What made his decapitation more chilling was the fact that his abductors had successfully demanded and received the sum of six million naira as ransom.
There is no doubting the hand that has been served the Southeast since President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power and wasted no time in pointing an accusing finger the way of the Southeast for his middling electoral performance in the region in 2015.
Having successfully whipped up separatist sentiments in the region with his blatantly divisive and nepotistic approach to governance, he did not cover himself in glory in the way and manner he has handled the agitations in the region since then. Where he should have taken a scalpel, he took a bludgeon and only succeeded in stoking rather uncontrollable fires.
Now, almost on a daily basis, in a region which has over the years given everything to move away from the nightmarish scars of the Civil War, people are starkly reminded of how fragile life is in Nigeria.
At the hands of the many faceless and cowardly criminals who crawl all over the Southeast opening up old wounds and inflicting fresh ones, people are being forced to relive their worst nightmares.
It is an absolutely shocking and devastating situation for which the IPOB must take a fair share of responsibility. The group has never been one for delicate designs and in keeping with that, the strategy it devised to free Nnamdi Kanu was neither delicate nor discrete. It has largely backfired spectacularly too.
While Nnamdi Kanu remains in the custody of the Department of State Services, ruthless criminals now roam freely in the Southeast causing people to not only question their place in Nigeria but their place in their ancestral homes too.
All those who have turned the Southeast into a killing field must be immediately fished out and fed to the flames. While it appears that there are many who would rather the Southeast burn for sins only they can perceive, it is crucial to remember that the fires burning in the region now would easily spread to other parts of the country once its business is done in the region.
It is also a good thing that the 2023 general election is at last at hand. What an opportunity it will be for Nigerians to correct historic mistakes!
Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com
