Over the past few months, many people have had course to disagree with the governor of Anambra State, Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo’s approach to handling the insecurity rocking the state. This disagreement centers on two areas people feel he has not conducted himself professionally.
Soludo’s Initial Approach to Insecurity in Anambra State
In the first instance, Soludo came to office in Anambra when insecurity in the Southeast was worsening. He didn’t invent the insecurity and therefore need not to blamed for it. However, the purpose of government and one of Soludo’s campaign promises was to secure his people. Unfortunately, on assumption of office, instead of deploying the machinery of government to arrest the escalating insecurity, the governor resulted to scapegoating. First, he alleged that the unknown gunmen terrorizing the state were not from Anambra. In many speeches in the early days of his inauguration, he blamed hoodlums from Ebonyi, Abia, Imo and Enugu for coming in their numbers to destabilize Anambra State.
One listening to Governor Soludo during this period would hardly believe he was the governor and chief security officer of Anambra State. He was speaking like a candidate in a governorship race trying to discredit an incumbent in the race. Many analysts, including the defenders of the governor were perplexed wondering what he was trying to achieve with these blame games. Was he trying to shift the responsibility of his failures to the governors of the neighboring states or was he trying to blame IPOB for the insecurity but didn’t actually know how to come about it? No one actually knew but if pressed, I will bet the second reason.
Meanwhile, this was the first thing Soludo did that put a lot of people off and signaled that this young man may after all, not be the saviour many people thought he was.
The second area where the administration of Governor Soludo erred in handling the insecurity was his initial obsession with ending the Monday sit at home in the state. By this time, almost everybody has come to accept that the Monday sit at home was doing so much harm to the economy of the Southeast. In other words, the governor was right to be concerned. However, the problem was, what do you do about it: should it be discontinued or not? There were many opposed to stopping it as there were those supporting it. The argument for discontinuity was clear: it was destroying the economy of the zone. Those in support felt it was the only way of putting pressure on the leadership of the Southeast to work for Kanu’s release.
When Soludo singlehandedly wanted to stop what was a regional problem and that required a regional solution, many people, felt he was running on the wrong lane. His subsequent town hall, diaspora and church meetings and consultations were all efforts in futility. This was the typical example of a leader who has not taken time to study a situation before rushing into it. This again became another indicator that the erudite professor may not be as erudite in governance as he was in economics.
Soludo’s New Approach to the Insecurity in Anambra State
All these were in the past. Like the saying goes, a wise man learns in the job, the governor of Anambra State is certainly learning in the job. After the initial blunder of blaming invading aliens from Ebonyi State for the insecurity in his state, Soludo seemed to have realized that as the chief security officer, keeping Anambra safe is his primary responsibility and no amount of blame game would dispense him from that responsibility. He is also no longer obsessed about ending the Monday sit at home or taking it as a do or die affair. Here again, he might have realized that with good governance, the sit at home will die naturally.
Currently, Prof Charles Chukwuma Soludo is acting like the chief security officer he is. He has assumed his duty and is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that the state becomes safe. Unlike in the early days of his administration when he was moving all over the places crying foul, pointing accusing fingers and looking for scapegoats, he is currently taking the war to the criminals in their hideouts. Many high profile arrests have been made, all thanks to the robust security architecture the governor and his security agents have deployed.
Very importantly, having accepted that most cases of insecurity are community based, the governor is in serious collaborations with communities and community vigilantes to ensure that criminal elements are weeded out of the communities. And honestly, all these measures have helped to make state safer.
Soludo’s Biggest Security Achievement
However, the area Soludo’s administration deserves inimitable commendation in its drive to make Anambra State safer is on how it has restrained itself from large-scale military deployments in the communities and the high profile human rights abuses that go with that. As it stands today, during this period of fighting insecurity, there has not been any large-scale case of human rights violation by the security agents under Soludo’s watch.
Anyone aware of the level of atrocities and human rights abuses committed by the Nigeria Army in Imo State in their campaign against criminals would appreciate what Governor Soludo has achieved in this regard. The temptation that the likes of Uzodinma of Imo State fail into and that many people expected Soludo to fall into too was to send in overwhelming military assets in the communities to crush the criminals. Soludo being a wise man knows that this doesn’t work especially in a situation where the locals are already biased against an army that is populated by northern Moslems. We have seen how peaceful and secure Imo State has been with all the military deployed by Uzodinma. Soludo has shown uncommon wisdom in this regards and deserves commendation from all of us. His tactics has been: “to fight the criminals without giving people the impression that their lands are under occupation by foreign invaders.”
While we commend Mr. Governor on his achievements in securing Anambra State and ensuring that human rights are also observed, there is need to mention the massacre carried out by the Nigeria Military in Ogbaru Local Government. Human life is sacred and no matter the security situation, the military and political leaders have the sacred obligation to ensure that the innocent are protected. It is called “non-combatant immunity.” Under no situation should the military – founded by the taxpayers’ money – be allowed to go into a community and kill people at will, not even in wartime situations. The rules of engagements are clearly spelt-out in international laws, especially in the Geneva Convention.
Therefore, the situation where the Nigeria military in a commando kind of operation, swooped down on the peaceful community of Ogbaru, without provocation, opened fire, killed scores of youths, and took away their bodies is totally unacceptable. That people like Hope Uzodinma have made human life cheap in Igbo land doesn’t mean that all of us should treat human life with triviality. There is therefore an urgent need to constitute an independent committee of inquiry by the Anambra State Government to investigate what actually happened in Ogbaru. Soludo has already demonstrated his commitment to fighting insecurity without sacrificing human rights and investigating what happened in Ogbaru will go a long way to show that the governor is standing with human rights and with the good people of Anambra State.
