Insecurity In South East And The Lingering Questions

We agree with some resolutions of South East leaders in their recent meeting in Enugu, especially where they vehemently condemned the unusual culture of violence in the zone, manifested in killing of security agents, burning of security infrastructure and harming civilians. That is the way to go. south-easterners and, indeed, Ndigbo, are not known for violence. They rather build and develop their environment.

Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, in his days as Enugu State governor, succinctly captured Ndigbo in his incisive essay, “Refocusing Igbo Youth Energy”, in portraying them as a people that carry their cot of reason (akpa uche), deploy themselves in mobility (ukwu n’ije) and unleash their boundless energy, in the application of their hands (aka Ikenga) – the trinity of Igbo character, leading to accomplishment.

Literary icon, Chinua Achebe, had earlier in his “The Trouble with Nigeria”, aptly recalled how the people started off with initial geographical and historical obstacles but, with one fantastic burst of energy, overcame the handicap and overtook their peers. That gargantuan leap by the Igbo was virtually wiped off by the civil war and its aftermaths, leaving them struggling to regain lost grounds.

A people with such chequered history cannot afford to be associated with violence, especially that which has the potential of affecting their kin outside their area and turning their zone to a battle ground. The South East leaders were, therefore, right in their stance against purveyors of insecurity in the region. But that is one leg of the issue.

The second aspect of the matter, incidentally, the more intriguing, is the failure of the leaders to situate the trending riotous culture in the zone. Recall that the entity in question was part of the then Eastern Region, which Dr. Michael Iheonukara (MI) Okpara inherited in near decrepit state at Independence but in six years’ time raised to a position of repute in Africa and the British Commonwealth.

The South East formed part of the larger Igbo society, which Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa), an Igbo slave who bought his freedom, had gloriously described as a land not tainted by crime, begging, prostitution and other anti-social behaviours but marked by cleanliness. This is now a section of the country being mentioned in derision.

Whether we admit it or not, the pervasive rot in the present-day South East has a lot to do with the questionable leadership recruitment process that has regularly thrown up charlatans as managers of the affairs of the region. It is a huge irony that, since the era of Okpara and the flashes of brilliance exhibited by Dr. Sam Mbakwe (Imo) and Jim Nwobodo (Anambra) in the Second Republic, most of their successors can at best qualify as passengers foisted in the drivers’ seats in their various states.

I had argued on this page, recently, that all sections of the society are guilty in this failure of governance in the region. It is not enough for the leaders from the zone to wash off their hands vaguely in the value degeneration in the area and blame the youths. That can only amount to being clever by half.

No leader receives accolades by throwing his people under the bus. Leadership entails critical thinking and conscious confrontation of an environment and fashioning out agenda at putting things right, and not playing the ostrich in the midst of challenges. The immediate challenge is to identify the point at which the youths in the South East began veering from their track of excellence to hooliganism. The axiom of an idle mind serving as devil’s workshop comes handy here.

Calling the youths to order should come with social reforms to get them meaningfully engaged. Most of the young men and women currently disturbing the peace in the South East are largely unemployed or underemployed.

Most of the factories and industries built by the Okpara, Mbakwe and Nwobodo administrations in the area are in various stages of abandonment or outright disuse. Credits are not also being advanced to youths willing to go into self-employment. The apprenticeship system for which the Igbo have earned global acclaim is gradually losing steam, exposing the young chaps to Okada economy with its untoward influences.

It is these unemployed and disillusioned minds in the states that readily yield to any message or character that offers them promises of hope and better life from their present condition of hopelessness. They constitute the monsters haunting the South East.

So, reclaiming the region should start with the leaders telling themselves the truth and doing the needful. They also need to tell President Muhammadu Buhari in clear terms that he has been grossly unfair to the youths and people of the South East. To be taken seriously in a skewed system as Nigeria requires a balancing act. In it, no one approaches the negotiation table from a point of weakness.

In his policies and utterances, Buhari has manifested extreme disdain for the South East. How, for instance, can it be explained that, in all the security structures in the country, none is any person from the South East found capable of heading? Who then presents the perspective of the zone when issues affecting it are being discussed?

To further rationalize such absurd appointments as being based on merit or competence, compounds the odious situation. If the same region, whose sons and daughters are placed on high cut-off marks to gain admission to federal government institutions can be termed not qualified for critical positions, something is then wrong with our reward system.

There is also this regular unprovoked ejaculation of force by security agents against youths in the region, which the leaders have not boldly challenged. Perhaps, at no time or anywhere else in the history of Nigeria has anything come nearer to the number of youths slaughtered in peace time as currently witnessed in the South East under the Buhari administration by agencies of the state or non-state actors that the government has turned a blind eye to.

It rankles profoundly that, apart from the occasional and perfunctory expression of condemnation against these dastardly acts, hardly do the leaders from the area take emphatic stance in defending their people. In such instances, the young men and women from the area easily resort to self-help.

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Thus, while we condemn the culture of violence among the youths in the South East, the leaders of the region should be bold and sincere enough to do their work and also tell the President that he has not been fair to the people. It goes beyond the re-arrest and detention of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu. That may even be the beginning of bigger problems, if not properly handled.

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