By Tony Adibe
The rather prolonged killings in Imo State, southeast zone of Nigeria have been purportedly linked to the January 2020 Supreme Court’s controversial judgement which sacked former Governor Emeka Ihedioha and brought in the current Governor Hope Uzodimma.
This was the claim by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety), after it reviewed the security situation in Imo State within 29 months – January 2021- May 2023- under Governor Hope Uzodimma.
At a press conference held in Enugu, the Intersociety Chairman, Emeka Umeagbalasi said that the research and investigation conducted by his group revealed that two categories of actors namely, armed state actors (government security forces) and armed non-state actors (Fulani Jihadists, counterfeit Biafra agitators, death squads, street violent criminal entities, etc) are those executing violent atrocities that have bedevilled the state.
In the 32-page document presented to journalists, Umeagbalasi recalled, though sadly, that Imo State was “thrown into political instability and socio-economic deterioration including citizens’ gross insecurity and other unsafe conditions, leading to the state becoming a killing field and southeast capital of political banditary since January 2021 or a period of 29 months.”
Umeagbalasi said: “The above was as a result of the controversial judgement by the Supreme Court of Nigeria on 14th January 2020 that installed the present Governor and Government of Imo State after awarding victory to a fourth-place finisher in the March 2019 Imo Governorship poll by upholding controversial results from 388 polling units never captured or reflected in the INEC’s official records.”
He added that the controversial Supreme Court judgement had come after a “controversial Catholic Priest was presidentially contracted to make an immoral pronouncement: ‘I see hope coming to Imo State.” He explained that the Supreme Court was also strongly suspected to have usurped the functions of INEC by awarding vote figures that never existed.
According to Intersociety, “Totality of the above remotely marked the beginning of mass murders and civilian house burnings in Imo which started in January 2021. The sum-total of the above further resulted to issuance of threats and counter threats between the government of Imo State under Hope Uzodimma and the deployed security agencies (Army, Police and DSS) on one hand and the leadership of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) on the other hand.”
Intersociety said that the IPOB leadership had responded to the controversial verdict of the Supreme Court on Imo State by accusing Governor Uzodimma of “being planted and imposed on Imo people by the ruling Fulani Caliphate to supervise destruction and Islamization of Imo State and the southeast.”
Umeagbalasi, however, claimed that the Governor Uzodimma-led government, “responded intolerably by unleashing full scale State coercive violence against residents of the state, use class criminalization and false labeling.”
He alleged that the state government and the drafted security forces also “engaged in indiscriminate and arbitrary arrest and detention of unarmed citizens without trial; killings, abductions and disappearances and burning down or destruction of civilian homes; targeted at members of the African Instituted Churches branch of the Christian Association of Nigeria and their sacred sanctuaries as well as sanctuaries and principal worshippers of the Traditional Religions in Orlu and environs. The Imo state government and the drafted security forces’ attacks started in January 2021 at Orlu.”
But the state Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Cyprian O. Akaolisa explained that the security operatives were brought into the stem the rising insecurity in the state.
