By Obi Nwakanma
As I write this, Hurricane Arthur lashes against the Cape Hateras, in
the Outerbanks of North Carolina’s Atlantic Coast, where I’ve been
vacationing with my family in the summer cottage of our friends, the
Kladakis.
We are in the true eye of the hurricane. It is 2 am; the wind has
gained strength, all is dark and silent; calm even; but for the eerie
roar of the sea outside.
Against the ominous surges of the storm and the wind’s terrible rage,
and the sea’s dirges, I am moved to think about mortality: life,
death, the meaning of it all. It is in that frame of mind that the
plight of the Ihekwaba family of Nkwerre is made bold and significant.
It is a story that should not be told because it ought not be true.
But it is sadly true that Mr. Emenike Ihekwaba, a son of the late
Francis Ihekwaba, the last Mayor of Port-Harcourt, suddenly
disappeared without trace.
He was kidnapped from the streets one Sunday, and has not been found
to date. The significant part of this story is that this missing man
is not just some kind of pin in a haystack, he was a prominent man; a
distinguished permanent Secretary in the public service of Imo state.
The story is both odd and absorbing, and smacks of some high drama. On
August 26, 2012, Emenike Ihekwaba was at a Thanksgiving Service in
celebration of the ordination of his friend, the Reverend Temple
Nwigwe at Uguri, Mbano.
At noon, at the end of the service, he left Ugiri with his wife, and
stopped briefly at a local shop on the Amaraku-Agbaja road. That brief
stop was the last anyone has seen of him to date. He was forcefully
abducted in the presence of his wife, and taken away by supposedly
unknown people. His distraught wife, by this time at her wits end,
quickly reported the incident to the police. But an odd thing
happened. By the time she got to the police station, a call had come
in to the station from apparently higher quarters to the station,
indicating that Mr. Ihekwaba’s abduction was an insider affair.
Two important related facts of this story ought to give us pause: Is
it possible, the complicity of the law enforcement arm in the illegal
abduction of citizens? Such complicity has often been masked by a
veneer of police inefficiency.
Nigerians have always thought that their police services are
inefficient but the inefficient and helpless image of the police is
perhaps a deliberate ploy to mask the complicit criminality of certain
key members of the police system. I’m drawn to this conclusion by the
questions that have arisen out of the abduction of Mr. Ihekwaba.
Developments following his disappearance point to an alleged deep
operation from inside the government of Imo state itself. At least,
the family suspects this.
On the day Mr. Ihekwaba was abducted, it was clear that he was the
clear and specific target of an operation. His wife was left well
alone. She took the appropriate steps and reported to the police,
which by all accounts was asked to stand down on the search for
Emenike Ihekwaba. It is therefore important for the public,
particularly the Nkwerre people, to stand up, and ask two important
questions: first, what does the government know about the
disappearance of a permanent Secretary in the Imo state Public
service? A permanent secretary is by all protocols a highly protected
citizen. These are the keepers and guardians of the institutional
system that protects public governance. They have the highest security
clearance on issues affecting the affairs of state. They do not just
disappear from the face of the earth without cause or consequence.
Emenike Ihekwaba’s disappearance thus puts a new spin on the
operations of government.
It reminds us of the dictatorial regime of Idi Amin Dada in Uganda in
the 1970s, when judges and senior government officials disappeared on
the orders of Amin. Nothing bodes well with an administration when its
key public officials begin to disappear without trace, and they seem
to do nothing about it as clearly as the Imo State government has not.
Secondly, the Imo public must begin to ask what the former Imo state
Commissioner of Police, Mr. Baba Adisa Bolanta and his colleagues know
about the disappearance of Mr. Ihekwaba. There are odd and
inexplicable pieces, and the family has made it quite clear, from my
interviews, that they suspect foul play at the highest levels. Emenike
Ihekwaba, a 1980 graduate of Architecture from the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design,
has been employed in the Imo state civil service since the early
1980s, straight of the University. He grew from a young administrative
officer in the Works and Housing Ministry, to head the Ministry as
permanent Secretary by the late 1990s.
As a serious and morally committed public servant, Mr. Ihekwaba was
said to be a serious voice against public impunity in the contracting
and procurement systems. He always was a stickler for rules. Such a
man was not beloved by people who arrive government with intentions to
bend the contracting and procurement rules. He stood firmly against
the last military administrator in Imo state, and the Udenwa and
Ohakim administrations were said to have kept him at arm’s length,
often shuffling him to ministries where he was unlikely to cause much
trouble.
His last appointment was as Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of
culture, where he did his work diligently, and quietly. Then comes
Okorocha, who appointed him Principal Secretary in the office of the
then Deputy Governor, Jude Agbaso. Agbaso was also designated to head,
even as Deputy, the ministry of Works.
In that position, Emenike Ihekwaba also was seconded as permanent
secretary of works. Trouble first started when he disagreed with the
administration over procurement and contracting processes adopted in
their various contract awards. He is said to have been called by the
governor and asked why he was being stubborn. He insisted on the rules
and was asked to put it all in a memo which he did. Not long after, he
was abducted publicly. Since then, the fallout has been the
impeachment of the Deputy governor Agbaso, and the assassination, not
long after Mr. Ihekwaba’s abduction, of his colleague, a Special
Assistant to the Deputy Governor.
Various deputations to Governor Okorocha by the Ihekwaba family and
Nkwerre community have currently yielded little results.