The recent analysis of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on killings in Nigeria leaves a lot to the imagination. Unlike previous security analyses which point to exact challenges facing the states of the federation, the NHRC analysis titled ‘Presentation of January 2025 Human Rights Dashboard’ made a blanket comment on killings where it placed Imo state as the third on its index of killings in Nigeria without specifics. According to the presentation, Imo is third with 21 killings behind Borno with 21 killings and Katsina with 19 killings. Zamfara state and Niger state complete the top five states ranking with 19 and 16 killings respectively. This index raises a lot of questions. For instance, one would like to know the parameters that the NHRC analysed to reach its conclusion. One would also want to know what NHRC means by killings as they relate to human rights violations.
The issue here is this: killing is a generic word. It does not disclose what the killings specifically represent, or, are for. So, one is forced to ask if the killings were state-sponsored, killings by non-state actors or politically-motivated assassinations. Were the killings from communal clashes or killings for purposes of rituals, domestic violence, killings from road accidents or killings from medical malpractice? The report did also not disclose if the killings were about attacks on security personnel at strategic security checkpoints. Either way, each of these forms of killings involves the violation of the right to life which the constitution of the Federal Republic guarantees every Nigerian except those who had lost their right to live through a judicial pronouncement.
The NHRC fails the test of scientific proof in its analysis. It did not disclose how it arrived at the numbers it published. It also did not publish its research methodology for such a sensitive survey. The report is not scientific and can be easily dismissed on this ground. However, the NHRC report, which is not supported by facts, creates the grounds for interested parties to hit out at governments using what many people see as a faulty NHRC survey. This is particularly the case with Imo state, where despite the improved security situation, political interests are cashing in on the misleading NHRC report to argue, albeit wrongly, that Imo state had a very bad security situation in January 2025.
Commissioner for Information, Public Orientation and Strategy in Imo State, Hon. Declan Emelumba, had in a recent statement, disclosed a drastic reduction in crime in Imo state. He attributed this to the adaptation of technology by the state government in the quest to rid the state of crime. “I am happy to inform Imo people that contrary to the insinuations by misguided elements, reported cases of insecurity have been dropping drastically from what it was in 2020 and the end of last year,” Hon. Emelumba had said pointing out that the state government had been instrumental to the successes recorded by the State Command of the Nigeria Police in stemming the tide of insecurity.
However, this seems not to have excited politically exposed persons in the state who see in the NHRC report, an opportunity to market their curriculum vitae in the hope that the report positions them as appropriate successors to Governor Hope Uzodimma, who is in his terminal tenure.
Governor Uzodimma has, thus far, taken Imo state through improved infrastructural development. It has strategically placed Imo state on the construction index of Nigeria with public infrastructure that would enhance the connectivity of the state with its neighbours and also open the rural communities to the urban areas. These projects have added value to the state and increased the public rating of Governor Uzodimma who many Imolites now see as giving hope to the state through his transformational leadership style.
However, there have been some desertions from his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state. Some persons who had disclosed their intention to contest for a place to succeed Uzodimma seem to believe that the movements out of Imo APC were a mark of denunciations of the governor. In politics, people move for several varied reasons. And, Dr. Sam Amadi, a one-time chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), who is nursing the ambition of succeeding Uzodimma, captured it excellently when he wrote: “…many people had expectations of political gains that have not materialized. And they have little faith of future rewards since many people have been promised and disappointed.”
As a matter of the fact of Nigeria’s political evolution, there is nothing politically wrong with politicians jumping ship when they feel that their expectations would not be met in their current parties. However, if the reason those who have left the APC in Imo state are for the fact that their transactional expectations were disappointed by Governor Uzodimma, then, the people of the state need to give more accolades to their governor for creating a system that sieves grains from chaffs and workers from hawkers. It means that many of those who were all over the place marketing Uzodimma for a second term did not do so because they believed in his capacity to govern Imo well and also be prudent with its resources. Their disappointment with Uzodimma could be based on the fact that their expectations, to live off the resources of the state, met brick walls in Uzidimma. Those who genuinely desire to serve the people are not usually transactional in their desires.
This is why I find Amadi’s summation in his article titled “If I am Governor Hope Uzodimma” a bit funny. In that article, Amadi made a studious effort to market himself as the most appropriate politician from Owerri zone to succeed Uzodimma by creating a narrative of his previous meetings with Uzodimma. That narrative was a very smart way to market oneself for the governorship of Imo state. However, reminding a governor of one’s previous contacts and association with him is not a leadership criterion. It is also not one of the qualities set out in a political party’s leadership recruitment process. Some of those previous engagements were also transactional and may have led to business relationships that were paid for.
In essence, the more the crowd around Governor Uzodimma disappears, the better for his ability to focus on delivering the transformational projects that define his government; the better, also for him, to lead his party through a successful transition that would enthrone a leadership that is equally transformational and people-oriented. The attempt to use the faulty and misleading NHRC report to argue that “the game is almost up,” for Governor Uzodimma is as funny as it is representative of a lack of understanding of the relationship between politics and good governance.