Mr Uchechi Amadi (not real names) is a citizen of Imo State but resident in Milan, Italy. After his primary and post primary education in his sleepy Umuaka-njaba community several years ago, Mr. Amadi who is in his late forties went to Onitsha, the commercial city of Anambra State to do business. In his quest for greener pastures, Mr Amadi mobilized fund and migrated to Italy where he resides. In Italy, the Umuaka born fellow is into “hussling”, a normal and common word to describe jobs done by Nigerians abroad to survive.
Apparently aware that he is in Italy to make ends meet, Amadi devoted his time to “hussling”, which fetched him a little fortune to send money back home. The fledging anti-migrants laws of Italy which are unfavorable to some foreigners especially Nigerians prompted Amadi to start investing at home. He therefore came up with the idea of establishing a fuel/filling station. Since there was no available space in Umuaka, Amadi bought a land space on the everbusy Owerri-Orlu road by Obi-Orodo junction. Within months, he started erecting the structure and spent almost what he made in Italy trying to complete the project. Everything needed to make the filling station operational was in place as the structures were ready to kick-start dispensing of fuel and gas to customers.
What remained was only installation of dispensing pump which Amadi wanted to supervise when he arrives the country this yuletide. But his dream and desire came crushing like pack of cards last week when the Imo State Government rolled out a bulldozer to demolish the entire structure. Only a phone put across to Amadi by a relation at home was only what the “Italo man” needed to intimate him how the state government machine buried his life time fortune.
Amadi’s trouble started few weeks ago when some actors in the booming kidnapping industry made the demolished filling station their den and hideout. Indications that the uncompleted business outfit was an abode for abductors emerged when a security patrol team on trail of a kidnap gang stormed the hideout where they did not only rescue three persons but also apprehended one of the gunmen in the premises. The gang had abducted an Eze-Elect and his kinsmen while they were on their way to Owerri with a Mercedes Benz V-Boot vehicle. The rampaging kidnappers went further to seize a catholic priest in Isu LGA and ferried the three victims in the clerics RAV 4, Toyota Jeep to the building in Orodo where they blindfolded and took them to an underground park in the building before the challenge of security men.
Amadi is not only a victim of the new approach to kidnappers. The decision to use bulldozers against abductors and hostage takers began sometime this year. Worried by the increasing rate of kidnap cases and the manner young men embraced the illicit “industry”, the Imo State Government decided to employ the bulldozer formula; that is using the heavy duty machine to demolish kidnapers’ houses and their hideouts anywhere in the state. A traditional Ruler from Orlu Local Government heralded the punitive measure when Government forces moved into Orlu to demolish the building of a notorious kidnapper said to be a relation of the monarch. The entrance gates and buildings of the traditional ruler’s palace was demolished in the process of entering the compound. Another family in Orlu was also a victim, when bulldozers made a mince meat of their house when one of their sons was involved in a kidnap case. After the two initial exercise, the state government recoiled and abandoned the idea.
However, the legal backing provided by the Imo State House of Assembly may have woken the State Government from slumber in their quest to eradicate kidnappers from the state. It would be recalled that the immediate past state legislature passed a Bill into law to prohibit kidnapping and Hostage-Taking in the state with appropriate sanction. The need to tame the nefarious activities of kidnap kingpins forced the Rt. Hon Goodluck Nanah Opiah led members to veto the power of the then Governor of Imo State, Dr. Ikedi Ohakim and include death penalty as reward for anybody found guilty of kidnapping or hostage-taking. In a renewed effort to include stiffer penalties for kidnappers and provide more bitting teeth to the state government, the State Assembly under the leadership of Rt. Hon Ben Uwajumogu on Nov 1, 2012 amended the law on kidnapping and hostage-taking. Apart from being killed as stipulated in the earlier law, all the kidnappers property anywhere in the world will be seized and transferred to the state government. It went further to state that the land where victim or victims are kept or held hostage would also be owned by the government. The fresh law, sponsored by Hon Simon Iwunze is to amend law No of Imo State House of Assembly.
In the renewed onslaught, the Houses of a notorious criminal in Mgbidi, Oru West implicated in a kidnap case popularly known as Okotoko and another complice from Otulu, also in Oru west were also demolished. Their buildings have since become a tourist site for residents of the area who had been expressing disgust over the infamous manoveurs of the confirmed gunmen. Next was the turn of a prominent traditional ruler in Mbaise clan part of the buildings housing the monarch’s industries in Enyiogugu, Aboh Mbaise LFGA was destroyed by bulldozers following orders from Government House, Owerri. Even as the traditional ruler, Eze Cosmas Onyeneke, otherwise known as Ise of Mbaise, of Lagwa Okwuato in Aboh Mbaise autonomous community went to court to stop the bulldozers, Government bulldozers still marched into his Ise industries premises for the odious task.
I must confess that the bulldozer approach against kidnappers in Imo State is a welcome development since the return of kidnapping and hostage-taking which gained prominence in the Niger Delta region where militants and sea pirates employed it as a tool to further their quest for resource control.
