Written by George Orwell in 1949, 1984 detailed the imperative of resisting oppression and tyranny, offering great insight into a twisted and very cruel future if nations are allowed to fall to the rule of totalitarianism.
The book helped put in proper perspective, how totalitarian regimes attempt to control our thoughts and lives through surveillance and by seizing control of the mass media, most times, violently. In this brilliantly articulated piece of work, we see a “party” that deploys enormous resources into eliminating dissent to the extent of establishing edicts that criminalize holding anti-government thoughts and opinions. Do these methods sound familiar to you? If so, then I welcome you dear reader to 1984
In an event described as the “Nigerian Drama” by The New York Times in 1984, the regime of Buhari, violating human rights and international laws, staged a kidnap of a former Minister of Transport, Umaru Dikko, after he was ambushed at his London base. This is the same junta that had just overthrown an elected government of Shagari under whom Dikko served as Minister.
Biafra agitator, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Credit: MNK
Fast forward to 2021, close to four decades after, the same serial law offender staged a similar attack on Human Rights and International laws in the abduction of the IPOB leader and British Citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, in Kenya. This is after he returned in 2015 in a disguised democratic toga.
Shortly after the abduction of Kanu, barely 24 hours to a July 3rd protest declared by Yoruba secessionist group, the regime sent in masked DSS operatives after the Yoruba secessionist agitator and leader, Sunday Igboho, stormed his Ibadan residence at the dead of the night like armed assassins, arrested thirteen persons and in a public statement released by its PRO, Peter Afunnaya, boasted to have extra-judicially murdered two of Igboho’s allies.
On the day of the protest, however, the regime deployed combined forces of the police and military. The security forces shot violently and sporadically against the peaceful agitators and protesters, killing Jumoke, a 14-year-old female trader.
It should be recalled that as far back as 2015, there have been renewed calls for the secession of the Igbo people from Nigeria by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB. The secession campaigns attained a threshold of popularity upon the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu on the 20th of October, 2015. And as the agitation grew bigger and larger, no thanks to increasing insecurity and socio-economic injustice in the country that has pauperized millions of Nigerians and made the country totally unsafe for habitation. This is also complicated by the manner in which the government protects and funds terrorists and bandits while deploying enormous resources into hunting, arresting, and killing protesters and all who maintain dissent against the regime.
But the secessionists were not the only group or persons to fall victim to the tyranny and brazen human rights violations of the Buhari regime. Recall that on August 3rd, 2019, at about 1 AM, Omoyele Sowore, leading investigative journalist and revolutionary activist was abducted in the middle of the night by masked men of the DSS who stormed his Lagos temporary residence like assassins.
For calling a RevolutionNow Protest against misgovernance and crass incompetence of the regime, Sowore spent five months in unjust detention after the regime violated two court orders for his release. Worst still, the regime in desperation to rearrest Sowore after it reluctantly obeyed the order to release the latter on bail, the DSS stormed the courtroom, violating the sanctity of the court right in front of the presiding judge who had to escape the violent scene instigated by the gun-wielding DSS operatives. The regime created an unfathomable precedent of judicial impunity when it turned Justice Ijeoma’s court into a war zone.
There is also El-Zakzaky whom the regime continues to hold hostage despite court orders that have mandated it to release him on bail. Aside from murdering his children extrajudicially, the regime has murdered scores of his followers for asking the government to comply with court orders granting bail to the Sheik.
The regime for the past six years of administration had equally devoted time to arresting, intimidating, and harassing journalists. According to media reports, no less than eight journalists have been killed on duty under the regime with over 500 falling victims to harassment, intimidation, torture, and unjust detentions. Today, it has become a norm to see journalists who have come to cover protests dressed in bulletproofs as though covering a war zone. No doubt, the regime had turned protest grounds into a theatre of war.
When the regime appeared not to be satisfied with simply attacking and gagging the press, it went straight for the social media, prescribing death by hanging for “hate speech’’; a deliberate attempt to gag Nigerians and violate their constitutional right to free speech. The regime did not want a free press, it frowned against citizen’s right to free speech and protests. It does not want Nigerians to protest offline and also against them expressing their frustrations on social media, especially Twitter. It was this gross hostility to free speech that forced the regime into banning over 200 million Nigerians from using Twitter.
No regime in history, military and civilian, has treated the judiciary and the rule of law with such disdain and brazen impunity. No regime in the history of the country has been so hostile to its citizens without any modicum of regard for their lives or constitutional rights. No regime in history had ever treated the press and the Nigerian people with so much hate and utter contempt.
The only regime that ever measured close to Buhari’s despotism is the military junta of 1984; the only Junta to have ever dethroned an elected government. Buhari’s capacity for lawlessness and impunity is second to none, such that only Buhari could have surpassed the record of his own lawlessness over three decades after.
Buhari may not only be classified as a despot with the unique ability to harness the powers of Nigeria’s systemic impunity to muster a social, political, and economic siege against the Nigerian people, he is the only Nigerian leader fit to be described as a serial law offender, ever to occupy Nigeria’s political space.
Several weeks back, Muhammadu Buhari in an Arise TV interview on the 11th of June, 2021, twenty-four hours before the commemoration of Democracy day, described an entire region in the country as “dot in a circle’’. This was days after he threatened to deal with the members of IPOB “in the language they understand’’. Instinctively and quite commendably, the Nigerian tweeps mobilized to report such wicked, unconscionable and thoughtless tweet that threatens genocide against a section of a country and a deliberate attempt to torment our memories with the ugly and horrific development of the Nigerian civil war; an event that has left unforgettable memories of sorrow, tears, and blood.
This is a government that rarely speaks to terrorists and bandits in the language they understand. On the contrary, it has continued to romance and reward them handsomely in ransoms, overseas scholarships, and social empowerment. But a government that begged bandits and terrorists with CBN loans a month before is shamelessly threatening genocide against a group of people agitating for self-determination and disdainfully described an entire region as “dot in a circle’’; a fascist statement that captures an intention and justification for genocide.
As is the character of Dictators, the regime reacted by suspending the use of Twitter in Nigeria. In order to massage its ego and desperate urge for impunity, the regime was willing to murder and completely bury the rights of its two hundred million citizens to social media rights, the same way it had consistently attacked all rights.
When it couldn’t achieve this with Twitter ban thanks to a generation that is not only defiant but also far above the regime’s backwardness, the government began seeking ways to negotiate with Twitter by using as a bargaining chip, millions of Nigerians who now have to rely on VPN to tweet. In the end, it was the Nigerian people that ended up suspending the regime from Twitter.
Although the “dot in the circle” statement as used by Buhari may have rightfully suggested a threat against agitation for self-determination, it also connotes a much deeper phenomenon upon paying close attention to the President’s interview, the disposition of the regime to other forms of rights and its general approach to governance.
What we see is a regime that has subjected free speech to persistent attacks, handled protests with utmost disdain and government critics have been treated far worse than terrorists. Everyone, groups, and ordinary Nigerians who oppose the regime’s anti-people policies have become victims of violent repression, incarceration and in some instances, extrajudicially murdered as in the case of endSARS and countless Shiite protesters whom the regime continues to kill like games.
The President in the Arise TV interview could not disguise his grudge and immense hatred for Nigerians, especially young people. You could see a President that was embittered when he said, “endSARS” protesters wanted to remove him. He made this statement as if to justify the Lekki massacre and the violent crackdown on the endSARS protest. Hence, the “dot in the circle” statement falls into a general pattern of a regime that has always handled dissent with state violence and is overtly hostile to democratic rights.
If anyone is still in doubt of the tribe Buhari’s ideology refers to as “dot in a circle”, then we need also to pay attention to how the government shot at protesters on democracy day, twenty-four hours after the Arise TV interview. The government on democracy day officially described Nigerians as terrorists by unleashing the counter-terrorism unit against protesters, who in turn, fired repeatedly at our Ojota protest ground.
Under Buhari’s regime, the “dot” people are the most endangered tribe in the entire country. They are the tribe whose social-economic, constitutional, and political rights are subjected to relentless attacks.
These are the tribes that were murdered in cold blood on October 20, 2020. This tribe is consistently murdered through overwhelming poverty, insecurity, lack of access to healthcare, housing, clean water, and basic welfare. This tribe does not only constitute a category of people demanding rights to self-determination, nor does it consist only of those being persecuted, arrested, shot at, brutalized, killed for fighting for socio-economic and political rights, the “dot” nation comprises also of all who are victims of government failings. This is the tribe of the 99% that has been subjected to years of neoliberal siege by a system of greed and power.
The Buhari administration has no doubt shown that it is hostile to all forms of rights. This is why it is important for the “dot” nation, organized across the length and breadth of the country, to unite in a struggle to put a permanent end to this regime of death and destruction.
Nnamdi Okorie said in late October, after the widespread protests against police brutality in Nigeria resulted in days of tumult in Oyigbo, a crowded suburb of the oil hub southern city of Port Harcourt, soldiers moved from house to house and searched for members of the separatist pro-Biafra group, IPOB.
Local authorities had blamed members of the state-banned Indigenous People of Biafra for the rampage that saw police stations and army patrol vehicles torched and six soldiers and four police officers killed in the town.
When soldiers arrived the Okories home, they wanted to take his 22-year-old son away, he said. But the young man, Obinna, refused to board the army’s Hilux pickup and tried to escape. He was shot dead and his body taken away by the soldiers, sending residents who witnessed the killing fleeing for safety.
“They should please give me my son’s body either dead or alive; I am committing all things to God who is the ultimate judge,” Okorie told Ubuntu Times, weeping.
For the days that followed, the River State government imposed a round-the-clock curfew and troops barricaded the area, leaving residents without access to water and food as security forces combed the area and randomly attacked locals, residents said.
“It was very tense. People could not come in or go out of the place for days. It was more like a war zone,” said Ike Azubuike, an oil worker who lives in the town.
Enforcing the curfew brought more casualties. Remigus Nkwocha said her husband who had gone on October 25 to a nearby market to purchase food items they could use through the curfew period, was hit by a stray bullet fired by soldiers implementing the lockdown. He died afterwards in the hospital.
Weeping in the midst of her children and sympathizers, Mrs. Nkwocha told Ubuntu Times her biggest worry was how to raise their four children. “I’m finished. I can’t bear it alone,” she said.
With access restored to the area after weeks of a punishing curfew which the government said was aimed at checking the activities of IPOB, a group that seeks an independent state of Biafra, the extent of the bloody raid has become clearer and residents have narrated their ordeal at the hands of security agents.
All the residents selected at random and interviewed separately said soldiers searched for members of IPOB and shot indiscriminately and killed people in an apparent reprisal for the killing of soldiers. At least 20 people would have died in the raid, they said.
The army said its troops “acted professionally” and denied attacking residents. The spokesperson for 6 Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts for hoodlums, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Facing criticisms, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state denied ordering soldiers to kill residents in the community, but insisted he will “not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state.”
Protests and Rampage
The Oyigbo incident has become the latest bloody incident involving troops in the aftermath of the campaign against police brutality in Nigeria. The #EndSARS protests lasted weeks seeking the dissolution of the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The protests found appeal with the country’s large population of unemployed youths and university students forced to stay at home due to lecturers’ strike.
Burnt trucks residents say were military pickups razed by hoodlums. Credit: Ubuntu Times
As the protests became a rallying point for many, authorities claimed groups with sectional interests tried to exploit the campaigns for underhand motives. The demonstrations culminated on October 20 when soldiers opened fire on protesters at the Lekki Tollgate in the commercial capital, Lagos, killing at least 12, according to Amnesty International.
The turmoil that followed the shooting left the country in shock. Thugs set fire to public and private properties in Lagos and other cities and attacked security personnel. In Oyigbo, the government said IPOB, which has tried to revive the defunct 1960s-era Biafra Republic, went on a rampage and razed police offices and killed officers.
The Police Area Command Oyigbo set on fire by hoodlums before attacks by soldiers. Credit: Ubuntu Times
An intervention by the army was thwarted as a patrol team sent from a nearby military base was overrun. Six soldiers and four police officers died.
“Since its proscription, the group has carried out intermittent processions in parts of Rivers State, especially in Oyigbo and some notorious suburbs in Port Harcourt Local Government Areas,” Gov Wike said in a broadcast on October 30 referring to IPOB.
“This evil, wicked and audacious action resulted in the unnecessary loss of scores of lives, including soldiers and police officers, and the destruction of both public and private properties, including police stations, court buildings and business premises.”
In interviews, residents said hoodlums also raided a courthouse and vandalized shops. Looting subsided after police and soldiers were dispatched to the area and a 24-hour curfew imposed. The attack soon degenerated to a confrontation between the thugs and soldiers, leading to the killing of soldiers, according to witnesses.
Killing the Innocent
That was the trigger of the siege. Residents said the army deployed more troops, who without systematically going after the attackers who by this time had fled the area, descended on unarmed residents.
Locals said at least 200 soldiers were deployed to cordon the bubbling district. They arrived in armored vehicles and went house to house and picked young men and loaded them into their trucks and took them to their base in Obehie in neighboring Abia State. Those who resisted were shot, according to witnesses.
Most residents refused to give their names or allow to be quoted over safety concerns. One elderly man told Ubuntu Times how a group of young men chased by soldiers around the Kom-Kom area ran into the Imo River swamp having reached the end of the road. He said soldiers fired into the water, killing the fleeing men.
At Afam Road roundabout, Ubuntu Times saw a burnt Volvo wagon car which residents said was used as an ambulance to convey a corpse to the mortuary when it ran into soldiers. They said after the driver explained his mission to the soldiers, he was chased off and the vehicle set ablaze.
Residents said soldiers killed several young people and their bodies taken away. Most of those detained and taken to the military based were yet to be released when an Ubuntu Times reporter visited the area.
Monica Chikwem, a resident of the area, narrated how her pastor’s son, a mechanical engineering graduate who recently got a job, was killed by a stray bullet. She said his body was left at home for two days since there was no way to move his body to the mortuary due to the soldiers’ blockade of all entry and exit points. The body was eventually smuggled to the mortuary through a bush path.
Chikwem said for 10 days, they lived in constant fear as bullets fired by soldiers fell occasionally on their roof. With total curfew in place, they had nowhere to buy food and other consumables and survived on eating premature crops nearby.
Another resident, John Nworgu, narrated how bullets pierced through his son’s leg who was trying to go through a back road to buy food for the family. Nworgu’s son survived.
During a recent visit to Oyigbo after the siege was lifted, one of the most talked about deaths was that of Queen Nwazuo, a 26-year-old polytechnic student, who was struck in the neck while at a hair salon. Nwazuo died before she could get medical assistance.
A poster showing a fatal injury on Queen Nwazuo, one of the persons struck by a stray bullet fired by soldiers. Credit: @OgbonnayaMbaka on Twitter
An Ubuntu Times reporter said almost all the homes he entered and people approached for interviews had tales of woes about the siege and accused the army of highhandedness.
On November 3, the Guardian, one of the country’s most respected and popular newspapers, reported how its reporter visited a house in Oyigbo and saw four soldiers knocking hysterically on a gate to a building. The soldiers screamed: “If you don’t come out and open the gate, we will burn the building and kill you and nothing will happen,” according to the paper.
When one of the residents finally opened the gate, the troops ordered her to call out everyone in the compound and as residents gathered, one soldier yelled: “The army is very angry with this community because your people killed our colleagues, we are here to search for certain persons and you should obey everything we say, anyone that argues or disobeys, we will kill the person.” However, after a search of the compound, the paper said officers left, saying: “Our target person is not here”.
Ethnic Concerns
Residents interviewed by Ubuntu Times said they suspected the military operation had an ethnic undertone, claiming that soldiers had asked some men they arrested if they were Igbo. The claim, not independently verified, appeared to draw strength from comments by the governor and historical sentiments.
A place of worship, synagogue, razed and destroyed by soldiers in Oyigbo. Credit: Ubuntu Times
In his broadcast, Wike said “Rivers State belongs to the indigenous people of Rivers State” and warned that “as a stranger element with strange political ideology therefore, IPOB has no legal or moral right to invade Rivers State or any part therefore at its behest; to disturb public peace, and subject lives and property to violence or threat of destruction under any guise.” He added: “We appeal to leaders of the various ethnic groups residents in the State to ensure that their members respect the sensibilities of our people and refrain from provocations and acts of hooliganism that could breach peace and security in the State.”
The group, IPOB, is predominantly Igbo, and the Rivers government said the group has used Oyigbo, which has a large Igbo population, as an outpost. The first attempt to create Biafra from Nigeria in the 1960s resulted in a civil war that killed over a million people. Since then, the Nigerian state has brutally crushed groups that align with that cause, often killing many.
Over years too, non-Igbo groups in the region have rejected the agitation for Biafra, and some Igbo cluster tribal groups have even denied having the same tribal roots with the Igbo, despite apparent linguistic ties. Some Igbo activists say the town raided by the soldiers, originally called Obigbo (meaning the heart of Igbo) was renamed Oyigbo in the early 1980s to spite the group.
In the chaos that unfolded in Oyigbo, some of the buildings reportedly razed by troops were synagogues assumed to be the worship place of IPOB members. The IPOB group has identified as Jewish and its members worship in synagogues, noticeably varied from the predominant practice of Christianity in the area. One synagogue was razed by troops near the timber market and another at Okpulor was demolished on November 9. But those interviewed said the synagogues were open for all persons especially the Sabbatarians, beyond IPOB.
Authorities Deny
Amidst criticisms following the attack, Gov Wike denied ordering soldiers to kill Igbo in the town. Speaking on television on November 2, the governor said the accusation was “politically-motivated.”
“It’s not true that I ordered the military to kill Igbo in Oyigbo. So, what about the Igbo living elsewhere in the state? Are they also being killed?” He added: “I will not fold my arms and watch criminals destroy my state, if those few criminals are Igbos then they should know that I will not allow them.”
Wike, however, said security agencies during their search of some residents in Oyigbo, saw shrines with IPOB flags and a picture of the group’s leader, Nnamdi Kanu.
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times
The army also denied targeting a particular group. It also denied killing residents, even when the evidence shows the contrary. The spokesperson for Six Division of the Nigerian Army in Port Harcourt, Major Charles Ekeocha, said the army only entered houses that were possible hideouts of “hoodlums”.
“We lost six soldiers in that area, their weapons were carted away, it was planned and executed,” he was quoted by Guardian as saying. “The exercise going on there now is searching and identifying houses used by the so-called IPOB members. We are searching those houses to see whether we can get all those rifles they took away from our soldiers, that is what we are doing, we are professional about it. I don’t know about firing of weapons.”
Usually busy streets of Oyigbo remain scanty weeks after a deadly assault by soldiers killed many in the town. Credit: Ubuntu Times
On November 18, the king of Oyigbo, Mike Nwaji, urged the governor and the military authorities to caution soldiers against the indiscriminate arrests of residents in the area, according to the Lagos-based newspaper, Punch.
“Even if the person is a member of IPOB, I overheard the governor said that the activities of IPOB in Rivers State has been proscribed. I didn’t hear the governor say search them from house to house, but the governor said their activities, meetings, gatherings.
“So, any person going round and telling soldiers to come and see IPOB (should stop); the main people who committed the offense had all run away.”
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