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By Pat Onukwuli
In moments of crisis, leadership is revealed not by the rumbling of official statements but by the direction in which responsibility flows. In Anambra State today, that direction appears increasingly downward. When insecurity strikes, the burden falls on communities. When criminals hide in forests, the blame is moved to town unions.
When government security architecture fails to prevent bloodshed, the question is reframed: what did the villagers know, and when did they know it? This is the troubling context in which Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s reported position, that presidents-general of town unions and traditional rulers, the PGs and Igwes, will henceforth be held accountable for criminals hiding in their bushes, must be examined.
Recently, gunmen ambushed the convoy of Dr. Ben Nwankwo, Chief of Staff to Anambra State Governor. Nwankwo reportedly escaped unhurt but, sadly, four people were killed: two police officers attached to his office and two civilians or officials in the entourage. The attack occurred on Sunday night, May 31, 2026, reportedly between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., as the convoy returned to Awka from an official assignment. Reports place the ambush along the Amansea-Awa-Ufuma corridor, near the Orumba North-Awka South border and the Ndiukwuenu forest community area.
This was not an attack in a forgotten corner of the state. It was an assault on the convoy of a principal officer of government. If such a convoy can be struck, the first question should not be what the villages failed to know. It should be what the state failed to prevent. Yet Soludo’s instinct appears to be to turn the mirror away from power and toward the people. The community must explain. The PG must answer. The Igwe must account. The bush becomes the witness box, while the state becomes the prosecutor.
This is governance by contradiction: credit is centralised, but blame is communalised. When order is restored, government is competent; when violence erupts, communities are negligent. When policies are launched, the state is visionary; when they fail, the people are complicit. Power is central when there is credit to claim but conveniently communal when there is blame to distribute.
The contradiction is stark. Anambra is not without security organisations. There is the Nigeria Police, the DSS, the Army, NSCDC, Agunechemba, Operation Udo Ga-Achi, Forest Guards, Vigilante Formations, Joint Task Forces and other federal security actors. Given the retinue of uniforms, acronyms, patrols and command structures, it is troubling that the governor would still lay collective blame on communities that have not been sufficiently empowered to confront armed criminals.
PGs and Igwes may know their people, but they do not command tactical squads. They may understand footpaths and farm settlements, but they do not operate intelligence platforms. They may hear murmurs from hunters and palm-wine tappers, but they cannot storm kidnappers’ camps with royal beads, town-union minutes and moral authority. To demand vigilance from communities is fair. To outsource state failure to them is not.
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In Greek mythology, the scapegoat has an older cousin in Atlas; condemned to carry the heavens on his shoulders. Soludo’s approach risks turning PGs and Igwes into local Atlases, placing a security responsibility on them that they did not create, cannot fund, and are not equipped to discharge. The governor keeps the instruments of state power, but the village inherits the consequences of state weakness.
There is, therefore, a touch of Sisyphus in this arrangement. Communities are asked to push the stone of insecurity uphill, report criminals, identify hideouts, expose camps, confront fear, only for the stone to roll back whenever government fails to act decisively. Then the same communities are blamed for not pushing hard enough. That is not partnership. It is punishment dressed as policy.
No one should defend communities that harbour criminals. No Igwe should shield gunmen. No PG should pretend not to know when strange camps emerge behind farms and forests. But accountability must be proportionate to authority. The man with the whistle cannot be blamed as though he had the armoury. The village messenger cannot be punished as though he commanded the battalion.
If Soludo wants community accountability, he must first demonstrate community empowerment. Where are the protected reporting channels? Where is the funding? Where is the insurance for vigilantes? Where is the rapid-response guarantee? Where are the secure hotlines, drones, patrol vehicles, informant-protection schemes, and feedback mechanisms? Where is the evidence that when communities report, the state responds before the criminals return at night? Without these safeguards, the policy risks becoming an exercise in blame-shifting.
The ambush on Dr Nwankwo’s convoy should force a serious audit of Anambra’s security architecture. It should test the effectiveness of Agunechemba, Operation Udo Ga-Achi, Forest Guards, Police coordination and intelligence response. It should not become another occasion for moral instruction from the top and compulsory guilt at the bottom. Leadership is not the art of owning applause and orphaning failure. It is the burden of accepting that where power resides, responsibility must also reside.
Anambra needs a governor who will ask hard questions of his own machinery before accusing the village square. Until then, the state’s security doctrine will remain painfully inverted: the strong explain, the weak answer; the armed command, the unarmed account; Government House speaks, and the bushes take the blame.
•Dr. Onukwuli, a legal scholar and public affairs analyst, writes via [email protected]
