Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, the governor of Anambra state, has been woken from his snoring slumber in addressing the insecurity that had overridden his fantastical dream of turning the state into Africa’s Dubai-Taiwan-Singapore. He had to wait for two press interviews by Professor Obiora Okonkwo to wake him from his profound sleep. Okonkwo’s first interview titled ‘Soludo is the problem, not the solution’ was published in October 2024. After the publication, the governor gulped more of his ‘mmanya nkwu’ (as advertised at his inauguration on March 17, 2022), covered himself in a duvet made from his favourite Akwette fabric, lowered further the temperature of his air condition, and went back to bed. It took further outcry from the people of Anambra state, and Okonkwo’s second and unsettling interview titled ‘Soludo is politicising insecurity in Anambra’ for our dear professor to remember that the security of lives and property is the primary function of his government.
However, his response, through his Agunechemba, left the people crying out for reasonability. This is because his approach has been more crude and cruel than civil. His style has been more archaic and devoid of any form of respect for the rule of law. It has left many people fearing that a snitch would cause them to lose their homes or business premises to Soludo’s bulldozers. And, this is what happens when a governor refuses to appreciate the dictates of the rule of law to grant accused persons the opportunity to be heard. People of the books call it a fair hearing.
Take for instance the new directives on managing security in the state titled “Anambra State Government Issues Strict Security Directives,’ published by the state government and signed by the Information Commissioner, Dr Law Mefor, which contained directives to hotel owners, landlords and landladies, presidents-general of town unions and whistleblowers. While the directive to hotel owners sought to ensure that hotel guests provide government-issued identification which hotel owners must photocopy and hand over to the Presidents-General of their host community, the directive to landlords and landladies states that “all landlord and landladies must obtain a form from their President-General for each tenant occupying their houses or shops.” According to the directive, such forms must be filled by each tenant and submitted, alongside, a government-issued identity card. It warned that “landlord and landladies who fail to submit these forms to the government through the President-General will forfeit their property and face prosecution.” The new whistleblower policy promises to pay N5m to everyone who reports a kidnapper to the government.
These new directives are worrisome as they were published without provisos. They bind landlords and landladies to make trouble with their tenants for non-possession of a government-issued identity card. This is because the directive suggests that every resident of Anambra state has a government-issued identity card. Government-issued identity card includes NIN cards, international passports, driver’s license, and voter’s card. It is not possible that everyone in Anambra state has at least one of these documents. So, what would the relationship between a landlord/landlady and a tenant who does not have any of these documents be? Besides, the whistleblower policy creates the possibility of profiling, labelling and stereotyping. It is most likely to lead to a new trend where quarrelsome neighbours would snitch on their ‘enemies’ just to go for the N5m.
I read the Information Commissioner said that this is not possible because actions are taken following thorough and detailed investigations. While that may be a way out, it, however, it leaves one wondering the level of investigation that went into the action on Udoka Golden Point Hotel at Oba, which was said to be a kidnapper’s den and hosts about 30 graves on the first floor and shrines on the second floor. Till this moment, the general public is still lost on the level of investigation and shreds of evidence found to justify the destruction of the property. There is no evidence of a judicial proceeding that led to a forfeiture and, or, demolition. There have been reports that the hotel owner is preparing a suit worth hundreds of billions of naira against the state government for falsely profiling, labelling and stereotyping his property and destroying it. The proprietor denies that his hotel housed graves as alleged and was neither a kidnapper’s den nor a shrine. He claimed that the property was in dispute between him and the former owner.
His claims further open Anambra to the reality of the menace of those called Ako-Odo Boys. Ako-Odo is an Igbo name for pestle. There have been videos of such ‘boys’, who are seen as enforcers of the governor’s directives, brutally dehumanizing Anambra people on the streets by using the pestles on them. What society, you may ask, permits such primitive behaviour when civility allows for fair hearing, prosecution and punishment? Is Soludo replacing criminality with another grade of criminality through the Ako-Odo boys?
It is not impossible that the quest to show the governor as working may have led to stereotyping and labelling of the hotel as a kidnapper’s den, graveyard and shrine. It is also likely to lead to negative profiling and snitching on perceived enemies, even among people involved in land disputes or those cheated by their business partners. Such profiling and snitching are, as so far demonstrated, grounds to send in the bulldozers which would subject many other people to fates, similar to the one suffered by the owner of the hotel. Under this sort of anti-crime regime, everything is possible.
Besides, Soludo ought to explain to the Anambra people why he dilly-dallied and waited until plenty of people had either lost their lives, the lives of their loved ones or property and, also, paid out millions of naira in ransom before remembering that he was elected not to wear “Akwete dress with a pair of shoes made in Ogbunike/Nkwelle Ezunaka and Onitsha,” or to eat “abacha from Umunze; ukwa from Isuofia, Anambra rice with ofe akwu, nkwu enu from Awgbu,” and “ngwo from Awa and Oba.”