Statutory Deficiencies And Glaring Operational Illegalities In Gov Soludo Government’s Countermeasures Against Violent Crimes In Anambra State (Concluded)
-Intersociety
Glaring Operational Illegalities:
· Roadblock extortion and other operational corrupt practices; the incurable bane of the personnel of the Nigeria Police force and the Armed Forces (military) on Nigerian roads particularly across the South-East and the South-South have been spotted and identified as one of the modus operandi of the operatives of the newly renamed Agunaechemba Vigilante Group; sobriquet “Bakassi Boys”; to the extent that such was recently spotted by the Intersociety field volunteers in at least five different locations along Nnobi, Ichida, Awka-Etiti, Igboukwu, Uga and Umuchu road axis. The checks specifically took place between January 30 and 31, 2025, during which the operatives of the new dreaded outfit were sighted mounting roadblocks and forcing motorists to part with N200 notes per motorist/trip. The security implications of such corrupt practices on crime detection and apprehension of suspected criminals and their criminal properties are very far-reaching. Apart from exposing the Government’s inadequate welfare packages for members of the new outfit and glaring lack of discipline and command and control accountability, they can also facilitate an escape route for persons of under-world as it is anything goes once each motorist is forced to part with N200 note, not minding who or what the motorist is plying on the road with.
· According to the Nation Newspaper of February 9, 2025, per Nwanosike Onu, quoting the immediate past Commissioner of Police, Anambra State Command, CP Obono Itam, “the Joint Security Forces, in partnership with the recently launched Operation Udo Ga Achi have killed no fewer than 100 gunmen in the State and many buildings demolished”. “We have neutralized (killed) more than 100 criminals and destroyed many buildings in Ufuma, Eziowelle, Achalla, Ogbaru and many other places in the State (including Lilu and Oba)”. The operations of the State Vigilante Service (“Agunaechemba”) are also found to be existentially questionable and grounded in patterns and trends reminiscent of the Bakassi Boys and their inglorious epoch of 1999-2002. Apart from demolishing buildings which have no place in the country’s Criminal Code Act of 2004, the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 and the country’s 1999 Constitution, their operations have also been mired in guesswork, false labeling, hearsay conclusions, indiscriminate killings such as the killing of unarmed and defenseless persons; abductions and disappearances of those arrested alive and hale and hearty and those critically shot and wounded.
A typical case in point was the February 6, 2025-killing of the trio of defenseless Artisan-Citizens Malachy Chimaobi Iwuanyanwu and Odinkalu Chinonso of Umueze in Ehime-Mbano of Imo State and Citizen Kosisochukwu of Isuofia, Gov Soludo’s hometown in Aguata, Anambra State. Their killing took place in Owerre-Ezukala in Orumba South of Anambra State, during which not less than 12 others were abducted, stripped half naked and falsely labeled or accused of “being involved in kidnappings and ritual killings”. Among the abducted defenseless citizens in the community were three NYSC Corpers abducted at the Community’s NYSC Camp and a deformed, later freed after having been threatened and traumatized following outcries by their colleagues and locals.
The three gruesomely murdered citizens were artisans working as POP and rot iron installers and tilers on a building site reportedly owned by an Anglican Priest. They were shot and killed after being dragged out of their construction site in the early morning of February 6, 2025. The killer operatives of Agunaechemba Vigilante Group also labeled their site gas cylinders as “Ogbunigwe Bombs” (high caliber explosives). The identities of other abductees were later given as early morning hustlers including a Tipper driver in sand and stone haulage plying between Owerre-Ezukala and Ogbunka. Through the activation of the citizens’ vigilance and contacts, the Owerre-Ezukala Community’s WhatsApp platforms and other social media were activated, forcing the dreaded outfit to free the abductees a few days later.
Several members of the Community also publicly disclosed that the new dreaded outfit never neared the dreaded camp of the Counterfeit Biafra Agitators and other kidnappers’ den located inside a forest between the Community (Owerre-Ezukala) and Olor in Enugu State. Despite the above-highlighted atrocity and dastardly act, Gov Charles Soludo not only maintained conspiratorial silence but also went ahead and hailed the new dreaded outfit for “a job well done at Owerre-Ezukala criminal hideout operation”. According to the Vanguard Newspaper of February 7, 2025, per Vincent Ujumadu, “Governor revealed that during a recent raid on a criminal hideout in Owerre-Ezukala, Orumba South Local Government Area, security operatives under Operation Udo Ga Achi neutralized (killed) 15 suspected criminals and captured 13 alive”.
· As if the above was not enough, the dreaded outfit on January 27, 2025, pulled down a multiple-storey building hotel (Udoka Golden Point and Suites) located in Oba, Idemmili South of Anambra State and turned it into rubble without due process, diligent and detailed investigation anchored on credible intelligence. Not done, the dreaded outfit controversially accused the hotel and its owner of harbouring “ritualists and kidnappers” and claimed under malicious circumstances that it discovered “over 30 graves and a shrine in the upper decking of the hotel”. On investigation, supported by logic and critical thinking and a third-party verification method, it was found that the hotel facility was previously owned by an indigene of the area who later sold it to an Old Motor Parts dealer trading in one of the Markets in Onitsha and environs.
The Intersociety also privately located a carpenter who recently worked on the re-roofing of the hotel, and he told the Intersociety that he saw the partitioned plastered block holes during the re-roofing and was informed by the new owner in passing that they were used for fish-ponding (point-and-kill) by the hotel’s former owner. The carpenter said he was informed of the above long before the Government’s pulling down of the hotel. Further investigative finding also strongly suggests a possible setup and false information arising from some interested parties that insisted that the new owner must re-buy the facility having bought it a “giveaway price”; or settle them handsomely or lose his ownership of the property.
The above was like what happened to the Onitsha Upper-Class Hotel of No. 8 Old Market Road, its owners (the Mokwes) and some interested parties of the Onitsha origin under Peter Obi’s governorship of Anambra State on August 1, 2013; during which the hotel was pulled down on orders of the then Gov over claims of “discovery of human heads”. The claims later turned out to be cooked up and false labeling. The demolition of the Onitsha Upper-Class Hotel was ordered by then-Gov Peter Obi and coordinated by then dreaded OC SARS at Awkuzu, Retired CSP James Oshim Nwafor, during which its inherited owner, Chief Bonaventure Mokwe was arrested and thrown into Awkuzu SARS dungeon where he was tortured and held for 88 days and in the end, the whole thing turned out to be a setup.
The owner of the Udoka Golden Point and Suites in Oba, Anambra State, Citizen A.G. Udoka has since fled and gone into hiding to escape possible assassination or abduction and disappearance by his rivals or further victimization by the Government of Anambra State including unlawful arrest, indefinite and arbitrary detention and trump-up charges using “prosecutorial vindictiveness”, false labeling and hearsay conclusions. According to the Nation Newspaper of February 8, 2025, quoting the owner of Udoka Golden Point Hotel and Suites (A.G. Udoka), he not only corroborated the Intersociety’s independent finding but also further disclosed that: The hotel has never been involved in kidnapping. Those things they are calling graves were partitioned fishponds. I bought the property from the original owner, who constructed it as it is, and the top floor was converted into a fishpond before I acquired it. The fishpond was designed to allow easy oversight of the fish and for them to be used at the hotel’s bar for barbecue. Since I purchased the property, some interested parties have been upset and wanted to revoke its sale. When that failed, they started manufacturing troubles for me. I’m a legitimate businessman who deals in motor parts, land and property. You can enquire from the traders in the community.
· Many top functionaries of the State Government are found not to be going to the equity with clean hands. Apart from forcing tens of thousands of citizens across the State into crimes and social vices through hash Government policies such as multiple or criminal taxations, indiscriminate imposition and forceful collection of illegitimate levies using persons of deficient characters as their enforcement taskforces and Government aides.
Such persons of deficient characters are also regularly protected from the long arm of the law by the State Government. As if the above was not enough, notable top functionaries of the State Government have severally been spotted attending dramatized private and public functions organized by suspected questionable and dramatized billionaires (nova riches or questionable and troublesome billionaires), showing off and throwing bundles of their ill-gotten cash sums about. These, such top Government functionaries do without investigating their sources of wealth including the possibility of some, if not many of them engaging in funding and sponsoring kidnappings, trafficking in arms, trafficking in persons, trafficking in illicit drugs, violent land grabbing and syndicated organized internet frauds.
The operatives of the State Government taskforces and sub-state actor vigilantes including the re-assembled killer outfit have also been found to have been steadily allowed to be drenched in voodooism including patronizing charms and magics and their makers and use of all kinds of hard and illicit drugs such as Indian Hemp and Cocaine; yet the same Government goes about clamping down on users and makers of the above mentioned. That is to say that the present Government of Anambra State must always go to the equity with clean hands.
Glaring Statutory Deficiencies:
· The repugnancy test and legitimacy of the law under which the new dreaded outfit operates in Anambra State is also called to question particularly the aspect that sanctions pulling down or destruction of civilian houses or properties reasonably or unreasonably suspected of being “criminal properties”. This is contrary to sealing such suspected criminal properties for purpose of conclusive criminal investigations as provided in the country’s body of criminal laws enacted or re-enacted by the National Assembly and in line with the 1999 Constitution and its particular Section 315.
By Section 4 (5) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), no law passed by House of Assembly of a State can rise in conflict with an Act of the National Assembly and if such situation arises, such a Law passed by the State House of Assembly becomes null and void. Similarly, and supremely, by Section 1 (3) of the 1999 Constitution, “if any other law is inconsistent with this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void”.
· The re-enacted Anambra State Vigilante Group (AVG) Law 2025 is a clear replication of the barbaric AVG Law of July 2000 (Bakassi Boys Law) under which the butchery eras of “OTA and Bakassi Boys” existed and later used in 2002 to gruesomely murder then Onitsha NBA Chairman, Barr Barnabas Igwe and his wife, Barr Mrs. Amaka Igwe (AB Girl) (on Sept 1, 2002) and other notable political figures and thousands of other innocent and defenseless citizens, from September 1998 to September 2002.
· The re-enacted AVG Law 2025 is clearly abusive of fundamental human rights, due process and rule of law and repugnant to natural justice and good conscience including “Nemo Judex In Causa Sua” (no one should be a judge in their own case to avoid bias and vested interest) and “Audi Alteram Partem” (listen to the other side or let the other side be heard). In practice, therefore, it is most likely correct to say that the referenced Law is targeted at victimizing innocent and defenseless citizens and shielding and protecting members of the violent criminal class including perpetrators and their sponsors and suspected criminal properties. The above is to say that no troublesome billionaires, circumstantially investigated and found to be sponsoring kidnappings ravaging Anambra State in recent times have been identified, investigated and prosecuted; meaning that it is either that they are politically connected to the State Government or are roundly protected by the conventional security agencies within and beyond the State. The above also strongly suggests, if not clearly confirms that 90% of those indiscriminately shot and killed or abducted and detained outside the law or disappeared across the State by the new dreaded outfit, the police crack squads and the military are members of the innocent and defenseless civilian population.
· The referenced AVG Law 2025 is fashioned in such a way as to encourage ‘trial by ordeal’, false labeling, guesswork, hearsay conclusions, use of ‘voodooists and voodooism and assemblage of stark illiterates in writing and digital security as its enforcers and operators. The Law was also crookedly enacted to absolve in black and white or literally the top functionaries of the Government of Anambra State, of culpability and conspiracy in the operational illegalities of the re-assembled “Bakassi Boys Henchmen” and their foot-soldiers, especially in the areas of indiscriminate arrests, detentions, killings, abductions and torture and enforced disappearances. There is also strong suspicion of issuance of “License to Kill Order” from the Throne to the operators and enforcers of the re-enacted AVG Law 2025.
· The re-enacted AVG Law 2025 is further found to have been riddled with zero command and control and general administrative accountability. Even though the Law provides for and designates total control of the operations and operatives of the Agunaechemba Vigilante Group by the Nigeria Police Force, but this is hardly the case in practice. Several instances abound showing that the dreaded outfit operates as an outlaw including mindlessly engaging in indiscriminate arrests, operational scene and custodial killings, torture, abductions and enforced disappearances and indiscriminate and unprecedented destruction of civilian houses and other properties, using trial by ordeal, guesswork, false labeling and hearsay conclusions as modus operandi.
· The re-enacted AVG Law 2025 is also dangerously offensive to modern crime detection, combating and prevention particularly the laid-down procedures for suspected citizens’ arrest, detention, investigation and prosecution; as well as near-zero provisions for digital security and “man-mental-machine policing”.
The AVG Law 2025 is further riddled with unlawful use of prohibited firearms (AK-47s), per “recruited Niger Delta militias spotted in the new dreaded outfit; contrary to the Firearms Act of 2004, the Police Act of 2020 (as amended), the Administration of Criminal Justice Act of 2015 and the 1999 Constitution.
Soludo Should Visit Families Of The Slain, Apologize And Compensate Them:
· Prof Charles Soludo who prides himself as “Human Rights Governor” per the “Anambra Human Rights, Truth, Justice and Peace Commission” set up in June 2022; is called upon to rise to the occasion by publicly speaking out in strong condemnation of the April 6, 2025-gruesome murder in Owerre-Ezukala (Orumba South LGA) by his newly established “Agunaechemba Vigilante Group (sobriquet “Bakassi Boys”) of the trio of defenseless Artisan-Citizens Malachy Chimaobi Iwuanyanwu and Odinkalu Chinonso of Umueze in Ehime-Mbano, Imo State and Citizen Kosisochukwu of Governor’s Hometown of Isuofia in Aguata LGA of Anambra State. Apart from the demanded public condemnation of their gruesome murder, Gov Soludo should also visit their families and openly apologize to them and offer adequate compensations and fish out and severely punish their killers and end the repeat or recurrence of such dastardly act. The operational activities of the new outfit must always be thoroughly investigated and the atrocious elements in the outfit weeded out and held accountable. Gov Soludo must rise to the occasion before it is too late!!!
Signed:
For: International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety)
· Chinwe Umeche Esquire
Head, Democracy and Good Governance Program
International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
· Chidinma Evangeline Udegbunam Esquire
Head, Campaign and Publicity
International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
· Obianuju Joy Igboeli Esquire
Head, Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
· Emeka Umeagbalasi, M.Sc.
Criminologist and Graduate of Security Studies
Board Chair, International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law
· Master of Science, Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
· Fellow, IVLP of the US State Department (Class of June 2013)
· Author-In-Chief, “Nigeria: Ocean of Innocent Blood Flowing in the East” (Dec 2024)
· Author-In-Chief, “Human Rights Made in Nigeria” (Dec 2024)
· Recipient of Several Local and International Human Rights and Humanitarian Awards
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