NIGERIA-POLITICS: Investigation Launched into Ritual Killings

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dulue Mbachu

OWERRI, Nigeria, Oct 8 1996 (IPS) - An official team has started investigating the developments that led to two days of rioting in this normally quiet south-eastern city in late September.

The panel of inquiry, set up by Imo state’s military administrator, Colonel Tanko Zubairu, Monday began a three-week public sitting to find out what Zubairu termed the “immediate and remote causes” of the Sep. 24-25 disturbances.

The riots in Owerri, capital of Imo state, erupted after the Sep. 20 arrest of a man, Innocent Ekeanyanwu, who, according to the police, had been caught carrying a human head wrapped in a polythene bag. The head, displayed on local television, was later identified as that of an 11-year-old boy who had gone missing while hawking groundnuts the previous day.

“On interrogation, the suspect, who told the police that he was an employee of Otokoto Hotel (in Owerri), admitted killing the deceased,” recalled Imo State police chief Iliya Lokadang.

The suspect, an apparently healthy man of about 30, died suddenly in his police cell on Sep. 22. According to Johnson Adenola, the police public relations officer for Imo State, the police were “embarrassed by the sudden death of Ekeanyanwu” for which no official explanation has been given.

When, on Sep 24, the police dug up parts of the hotel’s garden, they exhumed the headless body of the 11-year-old along with a number of other decapitated corpses and human bones. The hotel’s proprietor, seven of his staff and four other people were arrested.

During the exhumation, a huge crowd of onlookers had gathered in front of the hotel. With each find they grew increasingly enraged and, as soon as the police left the premises with the exhibits, they moved in and sacked the 15 buildings in the hotel compound before razing them to the ground.

From there they headed to the homes of the hotelier and a son of his who has been in police custody since last year in connection with the investigation of a kidnapping case and set them ablaze along with several expensive cars.

The homes of friends and alleged associates of the suspects were not spared in the orgy of violence. In one house, a mob reportedly found a dried corpse from which parts had been cut off. A pentecostal church to which the owner of that house was said to belong was also raided and burnt down after two skulls were reportedly found there.

It took a combined force of anti-riot police and soldiers two days to bring the rioters under control, following which Zubairu imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Owerri.

Police records show that a total of 24 buildings were ransacked and torched in this town of 300,000 people, which the police had rated as the most peaceful Nigerian city in 1995. Two looters died, but there were no reports of other deaths.

People who lost their property included the chairman of Imo state’s council of traditional rulers. He was accused by the protesters of associating with fraudsters and conferring chieftaincy titles upon them.

Also targetted was Imo’s previous military administrator, whom the rioters accused of tolerating nefarious activities while in office. Several houses he was said to have acquired while heading the state’s government were burnt down.

“In a way the riots were an expression of public disgust at the vulgar materialism that has overtaken all other values held dear by every decent society,” says Emeka Akudinobi, a sociology lecturer at Imo State University, who saw the mobs in action.

“These events are evidence of a society in decline, where people now seek the expression of power, not in creativity, but in the destructive assertion of brutal power over fellow human beings,” he said.

Behind the suspected ritual killings is the belief in parts of Nigeria that one can become a millionaire by sacrificing human beings. A total of 17 persons declared missing in Owerri last year are yet to be found. This year, another six disappeared without a trace in the city, including Chinedu Offoaro, a journalist with ‘The Guardian’ newspaper based in Lagos.

While the police believe that they are at last finding clues to the cases of missing people, they also acknowledge that many questions remain unanswered.