Special Correspondent
Apart from those in federal service such as police, army, immigration and the like, other northerners who reside in Imo State and other parts of the South East do menial jobs like sale of petty groceries, itinerant shoe mending, cattle-rearing and scavenging for scrap metals. They also do commuter motorcycle operation. You also have the malams who trade in currencies at Ama Hausa (Hausa settlements) in the region.
Their population is more in the menial job category. This set of northerners hardly observe hygiene. They look dirty, ooze stench which is a product of long days of not bathing with soap, sponge and water. If they ever bath, it is to perform ablutions for religious purposes.
They hardly live in a healthy and habitable environment. It’s either they are ensconced in the bush or uncompleted buildings or the dingy hell-holes (makeshift houses). Obviously, they don’t improve any environment they find themselves as they neither rent nor build houses.
Another enterprise they have now taken to (seeing that the menial jobs have little returns for their efforts) is kidnapping. And the kidnappers among the northerners have taken over forests in Imo State.
Forests in Owerri West, Owerri North and Ngor/Okpala Local Government Areas are now both homes and hideouts of many northerners resident in Imo State. They also reside in forests in Ihube in Okigwe Local Government Area of the state. Daily, they kidnap indigenes and residents of Ihiagwa, Obinze, Avu, Oforola, Obibiezena and Eziobodo communities.
Ransoms ranging from N1million to N5million are handsomely paid to them by relations and friends of their unfortunate captives before they free them.
Some however manage to escape from the kidnappers’ hideouts alive to narrate sordid experiences they passed through. Some do not live to relate their stories as we hear they are slaughtered and their parts sometimes made merchandise of or dumped in the forests to decay and return to dust.
Hardly does any day pass by without cases of kidnap being reported in the communities mentioned above. Severally, indigenes of the affected communities and concerned citizens have cried out and called on the security agents to rescue them. Activist and broadcaster Theodore Chinonso Ubah popularly known as Nonsonkwa has cried himself hoarse in his repeated call on security operatives to come to the aid of the people.
Nonsonkwa cannot fathom why kidnapping should be thriving in places like Ihiagwa, Avu, Okolochi, Obibiezena, etc when the barrack of the 34 Field Artillery Brigade FAB is domiciled at Obinze, a shouting distance to the affected communities. Also, police stations equally dot the landscape.
Those who know are however not surprised. These security formations are manned more often than not by Hausa/Fulani brothers of the kidnappers. Can a brother fight a brother? Not likely.
On Monday, January 29, 2024, operatives of the Imo State Police Command raided the hideout of kidnappers in a forest in Avu and Ihiagwa communities in Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State.
The police operatives arrested five suspected kidnappers who are of the Hausa/Fulani stock. They were Muazu Awuta, 30 years; Abdullahi Abubakar, 32 years; Ozeru Sabo, 25 years; Saddam Suleiman, 27 years; and Bashir Yahaya, 28 years.
All of the five suspects hailed from Jau Local Government Area of Jigawa State. The spokesman of the police in the state DSP Henry Okoye disclosed that the police discovered two decomposing corpses suspected to be kidnap victims while combing the forest. Okoye added that the police intend to conduct DNA test to establish the identities of the decomposing corpses.
The kidnappers of northern hue operating in Imo State seem to have acquired a certain audacity that is difficult to comprehend. On March 2, 2025, the Imo State Police Command again raided a forest in Irete Community in Owerri West Local Government Area of the state and rounded up four kidnap suspects three of them northerners while one hails from Ebonyi State.
They are Suleiman Ahmed, 26 years; Mohammed Salisu, 31 years; Gambo Jefta, 26 years; all from Jigawa State and Gabriel Ogbuzuru from Ebonyi State. These underworld urchins deploy weapons of mass destruction in carrying out their dastardly enterprise. The weapons range from assault rifles to fabricated shotguns and machete.
On Friday, March 7, 2025, kidnappers said to be of Fulani stock invaded communities in Ngor/Okpala Local Government Area located along the Owerri -Aba Expressway, taking captive passengers being conveyed in a commuter bus. Fortunately, according to report, some of the passengers later escaped while others were not lucky. Nobody knows the fate of the kidnapped passengers. However, the police command on Tuesday, March 11 disclosed that its operatives have raided the forests in the affected Ngor/Okpala Local Government Area communities and arrested eight kidnap suspects. The police image-maker was however silent on the identities of the suspects perhaps to avoid profiling.
In 2020 at the height of COVID-19 scare, reports had it that some 100 young Fulani boys were nabbed at Makurdi, capital of Benue State with motorcycles. Upon interrogation, they reportedly confessed travelling to Imo State to undertake commuter motorcycle business. It is not clear whether they were later let off the hook but one thing that is clear is that the number of northerners doing inaga (motorcycle transport business in Owerri and its environs has since ballooned. They seem to know the nooks and crannies of Imo communities much more than the indigenes.
Earlier, these northerners carried out raping of women and mothers in farmlands in Imo State. At a point, female farmers stopped going to farms for fear of sexual molestation.
An X user alleged of a grand plan by northerners to overrun Enugu State, dislodge the traditional institution there and install Emir of Enugu. He further alleged that the plan once achieved would pave way for incursions into Imo and Anambra states.
With stories emanating from kidnap victims in Anambra and Imo States, this plan is at the verge of being accomplished. Yet, the Igbo operate as if these disturbing incidents are not troubling enough.
