When my article on Bakassi Boys’ operations in Anambra state appeared on July 8, 2001, feedback swamped my e-mail inbox. Reaction was largely encouraging and positive. There was, however, at least one, which reeked with such venom that it kicked up a deaf-mute exchange between writer and critic.
My essential argument in that July piece was for the disbandment of all vigilante groups inside Nigeria. I went beyond the high-handed role of vigilante squads in a democracy to their potential to turn into political machines of abuse and murder for interests I’d described as "their ambitious creators".
Since that piece ran, too much precious Nigerian blood has spilled needlessly in violent clashes and murderous brutality involving opposing political vigilante squads. This insanity is fed by the ‘fashionable’ phenomenon of political office holders, particularly state governors maintaining some sort of loyal vigilante machine. These squads or the lunatic centre of them often moonlight, dispensing abuse and death for those who could afford their insalubrious services. The traditional distinction between the criminal and the vigilante has blurred so much that both have now become almost indistinguishable. Both now instil knee-buckling fear and nervousness in citizens! These vigilante committees have become veritable pools from which guns for hire are drawn to unleash mayhem and intimidation on our people.
Politically motivated vigilante-sown strife continues to tear our country up from all four corners. Particularly troubling is the brewing showdown in Anambra State in the mad run up to the 2003 general elections. Whether partly engineered or not by Abuja, Anambra State’s political muscle flexing promises to take no prisoners. The Mbadinuju-Offor divide is arrayed to knock out, not just the major protagonists, but also the innocent citizens of the state. And both antagonists are employing their fullest ammunition in vigilantism to destroy the state. This impending catastrophe, if not checked in time will make the recent events in Osun State seem amateurish in brutality.
Lawyer-turned politician-turned governor Mbadinuju is driving Anambra State to the brink. He has now effectively turned the Anambra State Vigilante Services (AVS) or his Bakassi Boys away from crime fighting into a tool of mean political thuggery and intimidation. Many instances can be cited in which Mbadinuju’s vigilance thugs figured in the frame-up or death of political opponents. And in the armed mistreatment of innocent citizens!
Sometime in January 2001 while on a funeral visit to bury my dad who had died a month earlier, a weird incident of high-handedness caught my attention in Nnewi, my hometown. A group of fundamentalist Christians had converged on the Nnewi Shrine called Edo to pray. This bunch of believers was apparently engaged in a fervour-laden crusade to rid our town of the supposed evil influence of this Shrine. Or something to that effect. In the relatively fast-paced town, word of the crusaders’ mission quickly reached Dr. Dozie Ikedife, former Presidential Liaison Officer of former President Shagari for the old Anambra and Imo States. Acting the over-zealous protector of his culture, Ikedife swung into action, allegedly inviting the Bakassi Boys to scatter and drive the Christians from the Shrine. And how the gun-totting Boys loved it! With harsh, dry cow-hide canes (koboko), the Christians were mercilessly flogged, beaten and bloodied as the Bakassi Boys enforced their dictum “God does not exist here!”
The mean spiritedness of this misuse of armed superior strength outraged and sickened me! It shocked me so much I wondered aloud what business a supposed crime-busting organization had with a harmless, peaceful Christian crusade? What was the crime in congregating in an assembly and worshipping a Christian God? With this atrocious behaviour, the Boys wildly advertised their other professional product: violence for hire.
Elsewhere, a certain Amechi Mbanugo, a man suspected of involvement in crime confessed to police that he’d been tortured by the Boys to link the traditional ruler of Awkuzu, Igwe John Nebolisa a.k.a Joneb, with the armed attack on Awkuzu in July of 2001. He claimed that Bakassi Boys wanted to frame, then kill the royal father. Giving a dog a bad name in order to kill it? Credible or not, this alleged criminal’s confession certainly helped to save the life of this traditional ruler! The list goes no!
Perhaps the most blatant, dangerous exploitation and misapplication of Bakassi force and violence by Governor Mbadinuju was yet again at Nnewi. On December 15, 2001, a mob of hyper-charged, drunken and perhaps even drug-crazed Bakassi Boys descended on Nnewi. This ferocious Awka-marshalled Force stormed and forcibly took over the offices of the Nnewi Vigilante Group (NVG), its own arm in the town. The gang then sacked and redistributed workers and cleaned out NVG names from vehicles replacing them with the AVS name and logo. The invading force then kidnapped for ransom, the leader of Nnewi Vigilante Group, and a community leader named Chief Agu Okonkwo. Bundled to an undisclosed location, Chief Okonkwo is said to be currently imprisoned in a Bakassi Boys’ dungeon in Umuahia, a locale outside the jurisdiction of the AVS. When informed by Chairman Chikwendu, the State head of the AVS claimed ignorance of the invasion by his men. The Anambra State Vigilante Services initially demanded from Nnewi town, in exchange for the release of Chief Okonkwo, a criminal ransom of three million naira, which it later hiked to 3.9 million. The Bakassi Boys claim the ransom amount is for services it rendered to Nnewi town!
Nnewi North Council Chairman has publicly clarified that the town owes the AVS nothing. He’d also categorically confirmed the payment of N350, 000 to the Vigilante outfit for its initial services to the town. This was the service rendered before the town took over the provision of vigilance and security to itself under the now overthrown Nnewi Vigilante Group.
The Nnewi incident, like others aforecited, points to the misdirection of the AVS to political demolition jobs. The genesis of this campaign of intimidation, now running in Nnewi, traces back to May 2001, when an Nnewi son, a Dr. Martin Igbokwe (no relation to writer) hosted a reception to which Sir Emeka Offor was invited. Offor was reported to have received some rounds of gun salute at this reception. This honour to Emeka Offor deeply infuriated Governor Mbadinuju. Not a man to brook competition, the irate, apoplectic governor raged in a directive to his chief of staff, Mr. Anane Uzuakpanwa, that “Council Chairman Chikwendu was biting more than he can chew. We can only have one governor at a time; when he (the chairman) brings in Emeka Offor and then releases more than 100 shots of gun, then that is going too far in my own state. I will not have it… Invite him to see me so that I will know how many governors we have in this state.. If he is tired, he should go home otherwise I will require him to account for everything that happens in his local government.” It was in this fury that the governor set out on his current statewide orgy of intimidation and abuse of political opponents. And in his bumbling, dictatorial buffoonery, this lawyer has not even minded the fact that the current local government councils were elected without any party affiliations and should therefore be open to all visitors, of all political stripes!
Most bothersome is the demonstrated inclination of the Governor to flout the laws of our country and even of his own administration. Kidnapping a private citizen for the purported debt of an entire town suggests that either the governor has lost his control of the Bakassi Boys or is prepared to commit capital crime to retain an ephemeral political position. Either case calls his fitness to govern into question!
An irrefutable, compelling rebuttal to the nonsensical claim of Nnewi’s indebtedness comes from the fiscal relationship that subsist between a state and its local government councils. Nnewi North Local Government Council runs the Nnewi Vigilante Group (NVG) as an arm of the Anambra State Vigilante Services (AVS), a state apparatus directly under the control of the Governor. Thus, if the NVG owes the AVS, this essentially becomes a debt to the state government. This non-existent debt supposedly owing is appropriately a communal debt, not the personal debt of the head of the NVG. Under the Appropriation Act in our type of democratic government, local councils enjoy certain fiscal entitlements from their state governments. If Nnewi North Local Government Council owes any money to the state, the state could have easily exercised the power of the purse and withheld the equivalent amount from any entitlements due Nnewi. The ability of the state to collect on this dubious debt without resorting to violence and its decision not to exercise this option puts the lie to its claim of Nnewi indebtedness. In any case, no amount of debt can justify a criminal act of kidnapping for ransom! No amount of debt, real or imagined can rationalize state-initiated terrorism! And no amount of debt can give legal exoneration to a violent state governor who kidnapped and still holds a private citizen against his will!
For that matter, as Chairman of the NVG, Chief Okonkwo worked for the AVS and is answerable only to the AVS and the governor. Why then did the mad dogs of Mbadinuju’s AVS kidnap and take him to Umuahia, which is outside the influence of the Anambra Vigilante Services? If Chief Okonkwo is being held for a fictitious debt of Nnewi, an Anambra State town, why then did Mbadinuju prefer to keep his captive outside his state?
The biggest lie about the governor’s debt claim is the very nature of the Bakassi Boys. This is a merciless, torture-loving agent of fear that nobody dares owe! I should know first hand, for even my poor, widowed mom would borrow money to pay the extortionate Bakassi security levies for all her married adult male children. Even at this lowest level, the smallest debt translates into a Bakassi confiscation of property. It is, therefore, unimaginable that a wealthy town like Nnewi would owe the outfit any monetary debts. Commonsense doesn’t support this debt claim! And commonsense informs that before a person makes any claim of debt, the claimant must first have determined how much is owed him. See how the state’s extortionist kidnappers have kept increasing the amount of their ransom? They are evidently raising re-election campaign funds for Governor Mbadinuju as if the entire budget of Anambra State under his control wouldn’t serve him well enough. Those AVS hoodlums are nothing but hideous extortionists! They are armed robbers of the worst breed!
Having said this, it should be noted the current crisis in Nnewi primarily stems from a collision of local political corruption and a governor’s willingness to avenge old slights. Council Chairman Chikwendu is said to be a very corrupt young executive. He allegedly contrived with the NVG to double tax Nnewi market traders for the services of the security group. In so doing, a multi million naira enterprise instantly emerged. Add to this, Chikwendu’s unaccounted supervision of the sale of Nnewi market land valued in the millions of naira. His tenure thus evolved into a business to milk poor Nnewi folks for his insatiable pocket and those of his friends. I gathered in my interviews that this old classmate of mine has engaged in this remorseless rip off of our people in cahoots with his corrupt local managers of the NVG since the Council took over control of the Nnewi arm of the Bakassi Boys. Chikwendu is alleged to have bought at least one posh property in London from embezzled funds realised from sale of market land and residents’ contributions toward the upkeep of the operations of the NVG. In addition to the seized Agu Okonkwo, Chikwendu’s sleazy partners in his naked armed robbery of the Nnewi people are prominent local leaders such as former Council Chairman Ernest Obiora, a local industrialist named Ibeto, Mr Mgbemena and many still unnamed others.
To combat Chikwendu’s blind greed and corruption, a third force emerged in the town. Called “Ife Nnewi” (the Light of Nnewi), this anti-corruption group commenced a petition drive to rein in corruption and bring Chikwendu and his dirty group to account. Suddenly an opportunity for reprisal opened up for Governor Madinuju! But instead of auditing shady Chikwendu and the corrupt managers of the NVG, Mbadinuju opted for the wrong-headed short cut of invading the town and claiming a non-existent debt. Accused of corruption himself at the state house, Mbadinuju may be feeling morally deficient to confront Chikwendu’s corruption head on. This is an all too common occurrence all over Nigeria. Office holders gain control of a robbery-fighting vigilante group, misuse the vigilantes to intimidate and cow citizens from questioning their armed robbery of their own people! Poor Nnewi folks are being robbed both ways! The government should audit both Chikwendu and the NVG and if corruption is proven, throw the book at all the beneficiaries of the corruption. You do not sow mass panic where a cool-headed approach would yield a more durable solution.
As Anambra State’s Chief Vigilante, Governor Mbadinuju is answerable for the tension now gripping Nnewi. After threatening to undermine the council chairman and the town, he has unleashed his Bakassi goons on my people. The AVS or Bakassi Boys operate under his authority; as such, he cannot wash his hands off the Boys-led attack on peace and security in Nnewi! He engineered the criminal act of kidnapping for ransom that has taken place. And he is the mastermind of the ongoing acts of harassment unsettling the residents of Nnewi. The state’s chief law enforcer has now become her chief law-breaker! The chief peace officer of the state has become her chief terrorist! The chief security officer of the state has become its chief subversive! This Awka-sponsored criminal terrorism is worse than the armed criminality the state pretends to be solving with the Boys. Kidnapping for ransom is a capital crime punishable by death under our laws! Mbadinuju should be careful that the emerging implosion of his vigilante machine doesn’t boomerang to bring his chickens to roost.
It looks too apparent from the invasion of Nnewi that Mbadinuju is laying a violent premise to his bid for a second term. He would get a re-election whether or not the citizens agree at the polls. Playing vigilante politics is the most eloquent statement on the governor’s non-performance in office thus far! It forewarns the people that their votes in 2003 will count for nothing unless they shield them with their lives. It portends an elaborate plan to steal the election by hook or by crook. And it foretells of the official terrorism and violence that are in the works to mar the 2003 elections. It is a politics of intimidation, of terror and of blackmail, which the people must rise up against and topple!
The choice should be clear for a state whose chief law enforcer has become not just the chief vigilante, but worse, the principal peddler and dispenser of insecurity and fear. What else would citizens otherwise reap when their chief law officer-turned chief vigilante erects an unaccountable apparatus of vendetta that flies in the face of all civilised enforcement of law? Anarchy! That’s what! This is the sad, ugly reality shaping up in Anambra State today. The state is a powder keg, a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. Nigerians do not need any more high-profile assassinations to remind them that those who trade in violence perish by it! We do not need any more Bola Iges, or Eze Odumegwu Okonkwos, or Odunayo Olagbajus to remind us that the monster of vigilantism breeds only pain, agony and deathly loss.
No matter how one looks at it, vigilantism is evil! Worse is vigilante politics. And worst is corrupt vigilante politics! When unleashed, this evil does not choose its victims. Proof is legion everywhere in today’s Nigeria! And history shows that no nation has ever survived through the public redress of private wrongs. Or the subversive perversion of state power for private gain. This is why society is a structure of people and laws. It is this structure that determines what is good and bad and how to reward or penalize it. Whenever this natural order is violated, something usually gives. Following this logic, no sane argument can ever be made for vigilante justice. Or the misuse of state-mandated vigilante justice to advance political goals!
I have argued and still do, that the fight to stamp out criminality in Anambra state, or in any other state of the Federation for that matter, need not degenerate into a contest for uncivilised barbarity between the state and armed robbers! I have argued and still do, that the State must always walk the moral high road in serving the people! I have argued and still do, that we can arrest, try, convict and kill all the robbers but do all these in a manner that will win praise for the government not only from the people, but also from history. I have argued and still do, that vigilante committees are irresponsible parallel security columns that degenerate fast into monsters that spare no one. And I have argued and still do, that a democracy should not tolerate, nor survive the sort of short-circuited quick fixes provided by vigilante death squads.
With equal force of belief, I have argued and still do, that if our people prefer swift justice for violent criminals, special courts may well be properly constituted to handle all cases of armed violence, including the armed corruption of public office holders. With even stronger passion I still argue that democratic institutions are raised to be accountable to the people. A sane participatory system of government cannot afford the development of unconstitutional parallel bodies that account to no one in particular. It is from this light that I advocated and still do, that Nigeria’s Police Force, ill-trained, ill-equipped, poorly paid and corrupt needs to be better trained, better equipped, better remunerated and cleaned from top to bottom, to make room for still idealistic citizens who hunger to serve their country in law enforcement.
Our times are civilized; or aren’t they? If they are, then let’s live within the dictates of our sophistication. Civilization does not mean a nation must reinvent the wheel for its times. It means learning from the experiences of others. A compatriot once admonished me that the kind of values I preach are good only for advanced countries and not for our Third World society, where people are less conscious about justice and the rule of law. I disagreed, replying him in these words: “..Bob Marley once sang, ‘The biggest man in the world was once a baby’. Biggest America is what it is today because citizens fought hard to mature their country out of its baby years of oppression and injustice. American citizens, as a result, are acutely conscious of these values because they had fought themselves through their own dark days and nights. Remember the darkest 1960s of the Civil Rights Movement. They still are fighting to push back the re-emerging frontiers of these evils. A people can only be as great as their determination to push their dreams!” This sense of purpose and patient determination has served Americans well for more than two centuries.
Nigeria can adopt the same patient attitude and vow to stick to the rules and to give every citizen a fair shake in the laws of the land. This is the heart and soul of democratic governance. It is the spirit to disagree, even to dislike one another, but yet be conscious of the others’ rights. When we accord these rights to everyone, including the criminals I hate so passionately, it makes it even easier for us to grant the same rights to our political opponents. It is a hard, painful and enduring process. But it is an achievable one!
In the final analysis, it is our current culture of impunity and abuse, of short-cuts and quick fixes, of belief in supremacy of self over law and of imperviousness to shock palpable everywhere, that emboldens irresponsible office holders like Governor Mbadinuju to think he could run rough shod into a law-abiding town like Nnewi, kidnap a citizen, demand ransom in violation of law and get away with it! If we do not begin now to will ourselves for the tough choices that breed positive change, the death of our civilization called Nigeria will not be far off!
Guides
A Curse of Corrupt Vigilante Politics