EDITORIAL
Experience from incidents of the past teach us that when the situation is tense and the society bleeds as it does in the South East now, caution is needed most to manage it.
Our South East is fast degenerating into calamitous crises in all the five states.
There have been killings in all the states and the latest are worrisome dimensions where attacks seem to target the security organizations.
It has peaked in Imo with the arson at the Owerri Prisons, aka Correctional Centre.
With the conflagrations all over Nigeria in the past years, descending to the anarchical abyss, the South East coming under this serious security threat entails Nigeria coming a full circle
The country is pitiably inching towards a dangerous pass and to
a point of no return.
It is the right time to step up action against this hovering at the edge of the precipice and tending towards a plunge.
But sometimes the security system seems to be in a haste to draw conclusion on who acts what
The Inspector General of Police on Monday quickly announced that the IPOB is responsible for the attacks
We also heard that the IPOB real or imaginary has denied involvement
A statement from it’s spokesman, Emma Powerful said IPOB or its ESN has nothing to do with it and should not be used as cover by the government for failing to protect the prison and police station.
A recall of what happened in Nigeria in the days NADECO tussled against the regime of Sani Abacha is quite instructive in the present situation.
When the attacks were on with explosions going off at spots, the news we always heard was that NADECO did all those. The government was always quick to announce that and the people believed them.
However, some years after these incidents when President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Oputa Panel, we started hearing different stories
At the Oputa Panel and also the trial of some state actors under Abacha at the Lagos High Court, so much was divulged to the contrary.
We listened to Rogers and other witnesses spill the things that were hitherto wrapped under a blanket of NADECO attacks
Today, we face another challenge and fingers are pointing. That is why it is important that we cautiously take in these accusations.
But another major concern is how safe the innocent people of the South East are right now.
Given the way the state views and acts towards the zone, our fears are heightened that we wish some sinister motive is not involved to have an excuse to roll out fully and mobilize state forces to execute mayhem and all will be blamed on a people seen as enemy of the state.
While not ruling out any possibilities of IPOB being complicit, but this conclusion should be cautiously taken at face value.
In recent history, during the #EndSARS Protests, we all saw on the social media, video clips of state security agencies bringing in their official vehicles people they paid to attack, kill and maim protesters
They were the ones validly suspected to have burnt down a car market in Apo, Abuja and all were blamed on the protesters.
We are in an era of politics and at a critical pass when the region is standing its ground that power should shift to the South East. In Nigeria politics, a total warfare, all is just fair and some external hands instigating carnage in the zone to discredit and make it non-eligible is also a possibility.
Whichever way it goes, the state needs to ensure that lawful activities in the region that has not been considered an insider in the scheme is not further done in.
We fear for a grounding of the region to a halt in an attempt or move to go against the suspected enemies behind the act.
We fear for a situation the government of Nigeria may hurriedly declare state of emergency in the region and possible absolute state hostility.
When such decision is taken, there will be nobody from the South East that will be present to speak for her as none from the region belongs to the team of decision makers in Nigeria security.
We need intervention quickly while the right thing is done to put the degeneration under check.