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By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Comprising five of the country’s 36 states, south-east Nigeria is the site of resilient atrocity. In the eight years from the middle of 2015 to the end of 2023, the monitoring coalition, Nigeria Mourns, confirmed about 3,000 killings in this theatre from open source records but unofficial estimates suggest that there may be up to five killings missed for each counted. The worst of the killings have occurred since 2019 and the worst-hit state in the zone over that period is Anambra.

Many erroneously date the origins of this to the radicalization of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in the aftermath of its proscription in 2017. In reality, the escalation has lasted for over a quarter of a century dating back approximately to the assassination in Enugu in 1998 of Igwe Amobi IV of Ogidi.

The annual Conflict Barometer by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research identifies the south-east as one of eight different conflicts of concern in Nigeria, describing it as a “violent crisis of secession” and ranks it on a par with the crisis of armed pastoralism in the Middle Belt of the country; ahead of the crisis of resource militancy in the Niger Delta; and only below the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-east and the armed bandits in the north-west of Nigeria.

Three framings define the crisis in south-east Nigeria in popular narrative. One is that it is about secession. A second is that most of the fatal incidents connected with it are perpetrated by “unknown gunmen”. The third is that the response to the situation is predominantly kinetic. Each of these is flawed. Together, they miss the underlying issues, with the result that they have turned an otherwise manageable crisis into an interminable atrocity.

Let’s begin with the first. The simplicity of the secession narrative is appealing at both the emotive and pecuniary levels. The former unites other Nigerians with subliminal appeal against a historical “Igbo question”. The latter enables the managers of expeditionary military deployments in the region to finagle more money for themselves using the excuse of preserving Nigeria’s territorial integrity. This would not be so if the situation were to be understood as a policing preoccupation with crime and criminality.

What’s the reality? IPOB’s business model does not stand a snowball’s chance in hell in any of the truly deadly sites of atrocity in south-east Nigeria. Awkuzu, host to the most horrendous atrocities in the region, is the site of “Nigeria’s most brutal police station” where hundreds, if not more, detainees have been killed extra-judicially. In Obosi, the ancient city on the banks of the Idemili River; and in Awka, the state capital, hundreds of young men routinely exterminate one another in murderous inter-cult and inter-gang warfare. In Ogbaru, located between the banks of Oguta Lake and the floodplains of River Niger, organized gangs mobilize deadly violence in sophisticated operations to rustle hydrocarbons. Lokpanta, the point along the Enugu-Port-Harcourt motorway where all the states of south-east Nigeria come close to sharing common borders is an ungoverned territory where commercial kidnapping meets atrocity liquidation. None of these square with the convenience or simplicity of the secession narrative or with its profitability.

Turning to the second popular narrative about the situation in south-east Nigeria, the mythical “unknown” perpetrator is a figure of considerable antiquity in Nigeria. It has been around since the inconclusive judicial inquiry into the attack on Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s Kalakuta Republic in February 1977 blamed the incident on the “unknown soldier”. In 2011, the traditional ruler of Ihembosi, a community in Anambra State, was disappeared by “unknown gunmen.” They were also to blame in the violent abduction and subsequent disappearance in May 2014 of Chike Okoli, former Commissioner in the same state.

The legend of the unknown perpetrator in Nigeria has over the years emerged as both metaphor and measure of what is widely seen as state incapacity and leadership indifference to the scourge of impunity in the country. Far from an affirmation of unknown actors, Nigeria’s legend of the unknown perpetrator signposts a sense of popular despondency or loss of belief in the capacity of the state to end impunity for atrocities.

In the face of these tendencies, therefore, the third idea that the country or region can shoot its way out of this crisis is worse than wishful thinking. The complex landscape of drivers and factors in the situation in south-east Nigeria does not lend itself to such over-simplifications. To reprise a useful metaphor, it is more deserving of a scalpel than a hammer.

Over 24 months from 2022 to 2024, Bianca Ojukwu, the current Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and I together led a Truth, Justice and Peace Commission (TJPC) into the causes of the crisis in south-east Nigeria, the perpetrators, the consequences and possible solutions. The Commission met and consulted with hundreds of victims and witnesses, including the security services, community leaders, clergy, politicians, vigilante elements as well as various armed militias in the region.

Two things were evident. One is that the situation in the south-east is fundamentally a crisis of governance and of popular lack of belief in the legitimacy of many in political office in the region. The second is a clear desire on the part of most people to recover their communities and address the tasks of reconstruction and healing from the traumas of the violence.

There are no easy answers to these but there are common threads. Rather perversely, the perpetrators who insist on rendering the region uninhabitable and the security providers who feed the secessionist trope are both engaged in a mutually profitable joint enterprise. Neither wishes insecurity in the south-east to end. This is why the audacity of Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo in enacting the new Anambra State Homeland Security Law, 2025, is welcome because it evinces a durable solution to the crisis. The law establishes a complementary security provider for the state called “Agun’echemba” (sentinel at the gate) and launches Udo g’Achi (peace shall reign) targeting atrocity insecurity.

Several aspects of the new law have come under scrutiny. In particular, section 18 which targets transactional ritualism has drawn attention, with claims that it lacks the clarity required to pass constitutional muster and discriminates against traditional worship. For context, the TJPC which I led met twice with Juju priests. Separately, I met privately with some senior exponents of the trade. They were united in acknowledging that some amongst them had chosen to parlay their skills in support of atrocity insecurity and made detailed proposals, including asking the government to help root out such practitioners, prohibit infiltration, and regulate and support legitimate practitioners.

The TJPC report diagnosed this phenomenon as “transactional accultism”, which it identified as enabling “violent cultism” and “the crisis of insecurity”. The report argues that this is “a major component of the psychological armor plate of impunity” providing the perpetrators of the violence with deadly rituals which lead them to believe that they have “an aura of both impenetrability to projectiles and invincibility in the field of atrocity, an immense psychological boost in an environment of impunity.”

The law also targets the compounded deficit of legitimate political leadership as an underlying driver of the crisis of insecurity in the region. In 2005, the New Humanitarian reported on the situation in south-east Nigeria that “rigged elections increase disenchantment”, explaining that sympathy for separatism “has been growing since the general elections of April and May 2003, which were marred by widespread allegations of vote rigging.” Office holders who are widely seen as lacking legitimacy are liable to be compromised when confronted with atrocity insecurity. Instead, they get reduced to belligerents instrumentalizing the violence rather than seeking to end it. In this law, Governor Soludo shows he is different.

Above all, this law also addresses the need to rebuild the capacity to administer criminal justice fairly and effectively, beginning with responsible policing; capable magistrates, coroners and the office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP). In many states in the region, the police have been rendered destitute of confidence, denuded of the trust of communities. Similarly, most magistrates are desolate and DPP’s offices in the region are unfunded, leaving prosecutorial personnel at the mercy of self-interested parties or of adversaries who threaten them into being ineffectual. The result is that in much of region, all sides glamourize summary, arbitrary or extra-judicial killing as the solution to crime or deviance, disagreement or dissonance.

None of these is easy to implement. As a programme, it confronts organized opposition from those who have profited so far from the over-simplification in a single-narrative of secession that has bedeviled the search for solutions to the situation. This present Government of Anambra State has demonstrated single-mindedness ending this. For that it deserves support and other states in the region can adapt this model.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]