By Toye Olori
Lagos - It is not often that security agents go after an outfit set up to complement the fight against crime. But not in the case of the dreaded Anambra State Vigilance Service (AVS), popularly called the Bakassi Boys, set up by the state government to help curb armed robbery.
About 120 members of the "Bakassi Boys" and 46 people allegedly detained by the group in torture cells were paraded this week by police in Abuja, along with assorted charms and weapons used by the group in their fight against armed robbers.
Reports say the Bakassi group, set up by the south-eastern State of Anambra in 2000 as a parallel security outfit, is now used by the well-off to settle scores with opponents. Governor Chinwoke Mbadiniju of Anambra State said that before the inception of the Bakassi Boys, robbery attacks in Onitsha, a major commercial centre in the south-east, were so common that women took refuge in churches at night.
"The police had failed them. So, this was the scenario. We called upon the police, they did not rise to the occasion. The failure of the police to effectively check the sudden upsurge in armed robbery in the state made us look inwards and eventually, we remembered there was (a vigilante group) on the ground... We invited the Bakassi Boys."
"We are pursuing the armed robbers and they are running away from us. The tide has changed. But when everybody saw that we have virtually reduced crime to its barest minimum the argument changed, they now started raising the issue of human rights because we are killing armed robbers," Mbadiniju said.
The organisation has had brushes with law enforcement agents because of the mode of operation of its members, and lately the group has been accused of involvement in various murders of prominent persons in the state. The Bakassi Boys are accused of using voodoo and unorthodox means to detect criminals, who are summarily and brutally "macheted" without trial.
For example, members of the group are said to point a knife or cutlass to the sky... If the person is an armed robber who has not killed anybody, nothing happens. But if the person has, the knife or machete will become blood-red. A suspect perceived to be guilty is summarily butchered, in public.
Hundreds of people, criminals and the innocent, have died at the hands of the vigilante outfit. Innocent people, including some in prominent positions, have also been harrassed for alleged involvement with or protection of armed robbers.
Two Bakassi Boys leaders, Gilbert Okoye and Emeka Udegbunam, were detained in Lagos and Abuja because of the activities of the group. Okoye was arrested last year for allegations that his group killed Chief Godwin Okonkwo, chairperson of the All Peoples Party (APP) in the state's Nnewi South council area. Okonkwo was allegedly slaughtered by a group identified as Bakassi Boys in February 2001.
However, Udegbunam, who was arrested and detained in 2 000 but was later released, has insisted that all victims of the AVS were active players on the wrong side of the law. "If anybody comes complaining that there is anybody killed by AVS who is not a criminal, I want to be held responsible," he said.
The group and the Anambra State government have been dragged to court by Honourable Ifeanyi Ibegbu, the minority leader in the state House of Assembly. In August 2000 Inegbu had a close shave with death when the vigilante group arrested and tortured him for allegedly harbouring armed robbery suspects. He was later cleared by the House and ordered to be compensated by the state government.
Ibegbu accused a prominent politician in the state of instigating the Bakassi Boys to settle scores with him after a physical fight between them two two days before his arrest.
Last week's arrest of members of the Bakassi Boys has generated mixed reactions. Some welcome it, saying the group has lost its original purpose, but others want the Nigerian government to ensure that the police effectively combat crime before banning such vigilante groups.
Emeka Ibe, a trader in Lagos, believes the crimes allegedly committed by Bakassi Boys were actually committed by what he calls fake Bakassi groups set up by some politicians for reasons of self-interest.
"There are two Bakassi groups, the real ones and the fake. The fake ones were created by politicians who have scores to settle. These are the ones that are being used to terrorise innocent citizens, but the real ones helped the state to get rid of criminals, reducing crime in Anambra State.
"Politicians and prominent people being killed in recent times, allegedly by the Bakassi boys, I believe were killed by fake Bakassi groups set up for vendetta by political opponents," Ibe said.
Ibe explained: "The real Bakassi boys were duly constituted by the Anambra State government and recognised since the state House of Assembly passed a bill setting the group up to help the police and the law was signed by the state governor. If the federal government must ban the group, it must be ready to provide adequate security in the country."
However, James Ucheoha, a Lagos-based political scientist from Onitsha in Anambra state who witnessed summary killings of alleged armed robbers by the group, describes the activities of the Bakassi Boys as similar to those of Muslim Sharia law proponents in northern Nigeria.
Both "kill people without proper trial. And if you look at those showed on television yesterday, you will see that the people the Bakassi boys are keeping hostage are Igbos. Among those arrested along with the Bakassi Boys by the police is an Indian national who used the group to settle scores against their fellow Igbos," Ucheoha said.
"If they (Bakassi Boys) can allow an Indian to use them against their own people, then Bakassi is an aberration and I want the Nigerian police to interrogate those arrested very well so as to determine if they have a hand in the assassinations of prominent people in Anambra State.
"These people are an aberration and they have to be kept away. It is an illegal organisation and they have no right to be around, let alone to kill people."
Rosemary Njoku, a civil servant from Anambra state, is also not happy with the setting up of ethnic militia that could be used by those in power to destroy their political opponents.
"I know the security situation in Nigeria is bad but when you give a few people weapons and power and ask them to arrest criminals since the police seemed unable to curtail the crime situation, one day you will wake up and see that the group will use the weapons on you and innocent citizens. That is what has happened with the Bakassi in Anambra State," she said.
"Instead of being complimentary to the activities of crime prevention, Bakassi as being operated actually connive with debt collectors and those who want to settle scores, and I think, as far as I am concerned, the aims and objectives of Bakassi have been defeated.
"If this issue is not addressed properly now, the bigger one is coming during the 2003 general elections. Political opponents will use that group to unleash mayhem on the people of Anambra State," Njoku said.
Last year the Nigerian government outlawed all vigilante groups. Prominent citizens and human rights groups and newspaper editorials have condemned their operations and called for their disbandment.
This Day newspaper warned: "Putting faith in the militia is a hollow solution and giving the faith a legal backing amounts to encouraging illegality. The Nigerian constitution places the police under its exclusive control. So the state has no right to legislate on police matters."
Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution provides for only one police force to be called the Nigeria Police Force. It is disingenious, the paper said, to say that the AVS as presently operated in Anambra State is not an alternative police force.
"While appreciating the fact that the AVS is very popular in Anambra State because it has chased out of town armed robbers who terrorise people day and night, legitimising an ethnic militia is not the way out because the idea is fraught with so many in-built dangers.
"Apart from the fact that the militiamen are not trained for the job they are supposed to perform, there are endless possibilities for miscarriage of justice, extra-judicial execution and political victimisation and proliferation of ethnic militia and warlords," the paper said.
"We believe that the solution to the grave security problem in the country is not in encouraging ethnic armies that could transmute into political armies. It lies in reforming the police and in overhauling our concept of policing," the paper said. - Independent Foreign Service