The Onitsha brigade shooting

THESE days, it seems that no one really knows what exactly is going on with the paramilitary agencies and state task forces in Anambra State. Increasingly, they are perpetrating acts of lawlessness that call the supervisory role of the Anambra State government into question. Only last week, operatives of Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra State, also known as OCHA Brigade, staged a shooting spree that claimed the life of a pregnant woman and left four other persons grievously injured. The operatives were reportedly undertaking an enforcement exercise at the Main Market in Onitsha, the Anambra State capital, when an altercation ensued between them and some traders, leading to the shooting incident that created pandemonium in the market, with the throng of traders and customers scampering for safety. Initial reports claimed that the shooting led to the death of five persons, including a pregnant woman, but the state police command insisted that it was only the pregnant woman that died in the incident, while four other persons were injured and rushed to hospital.

Predictably, the incident generated outrage across the state and beyond. In reaction, the Anambra State government issued a statement reaffirming its commitment to law, order and public accountability. It described the operatives who went on the exercise that led to the shooting as being unauthorised. Speaking on the development, the Managing Director of the OCHA Brigade, Mr Celestine Anere, said: “The operation was not approved by the leadership of the agency, and such unsanctioned actions contradict the clear standards guiding the operations of the Brigade. Those involved have been taken into custody and will be handed over to the police and the Department of State Services (DSS) for thorough investigation.” According to Anere, the administration of Governor Chukwuma Soludo remains resolute in its efforts to entrench discipline, restore sanity and ensure a clean, green and livable Anambra. He added that any staffer found culpable would face decisive sanctions, adding that all enforcement activities of the OCHA Brigade must align strictly with the law establishing the agency.

The statement by the Ocha Brigade commander may sound reassuring, but it hardly moves the needle. The actions of the OCHA Brigade and other state enforcement agencies in Anambra State are horrendous and criminal, and the reasons adduced for them, if at all, are decidedly perverse. We ask again: what really is going on in Anambra State? What is the connection between the lofty goal of creating a clean, healthy and decent environment and engaging in mindless shooting of traders and customers at a major market? Just why are environmental officers carrying guns and unleashing fury on a distraught populace? By the way, how many arms-bearing, state-sanctioned groups are operating in the state? Recently on this page, we addressed the heartrending case of an innocent National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member, Jennifer Elohor, who was brutalised by operatives of one of the security agencies in the state known as Agunechemba at a corpers’ lodge in Oba in Idemili Local Government Area of the state. Without any shred of evidence whatsoever, the corps member was charged with being an internet fraudster and then brutally beaten and stripped naked by the gun-toting state officials who acted more like criminals on that occasion. Now, members of yet another security agency have murdered an innocent citizen carrying the germ of another human life within her. By so doing, they sowed tears and untold agony into a family probably struggling, like many others, to eke out an existence in Nigeria’s very difficult circumstances.

Where did the different groups get the arms they wield recklessly across the state? Are they backed by law? Why is there so much lawlessness and suppression of citizens by arms-bearing groups? We ask these questions because the situation in Anambra State is extremely dicey for law-abiding citizens who, on the one hand, have to endure the bloodcurdling activities of members of the outlawed Eastern Security Network (ESN) and, on the other, also deal with the various arms-bearing groups operating under the banner of the Anambra State government, while at the same time coping with the unpleasant consequences of military and police operations against the outlaws in which innocent citizens sometimes get caught. We have had occasion to commend Governor Soludo for certain steps taken in the state but on this occasion, we urge him to rise up to the responsibility of his office by calling the lawless groups to order. The citizens of Anambra State are not enemies to be hunted down and should not be treated as such. They should be treated with the dignity they deserve, and if any state agent won’t mend, they should be prosecuted and jailed.

There must be clarity regarding the different agencies operating under the banner of the Anambra State government. In November last year, two of the state’s revenue collectors were set ablaze by an angry mob for causing a tipper driver to ram and kill a bystander at Old Market Road, along Venn Road by Egerton Bus Stop in Onitsha. Eyewitnesses said that the tipper driver, with whom the revenue louts were dragging the steering wheel, lost control of the vehicle and ran over the bystander. Incidents like this cast Anambra State in very negative light. They should be brought to a standstill.

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