Arson on INEC offices: Clergymen, former education minister react in Imo
What you are about to read now, did not come into the reckoning, at the time I primed myself to work on something of state importance.
A completely different view was loudly playing in my head, until the ugly news of the burning of the High Court Complex, Orlu, by unidentified hoodlums, rented the air!
About 72 hours after unidentified hoodlums razed the court in Orlu, news filtered in that a Magistrate Court in Owerri, was torched! This time, the Bailiffs office was targeted. Exhibits, files and indeed, scores of very vital documents, were burnt.
After ruminating over the news break, which came in quick succession, I opted to tackle the issue of growing state of insecurity and arson, in the land.
These repeated and brazen attacks and damages, leave all careful watchers with a feeling that there may be countless, ignoble individuals, who are surreptitiously working very hard to bring Imo State and indeed, Nigeria, to a much lower pedestal than where we are at present.
Just this December alone, the three INEC offices in Orlu, Oru West and Owerri Municipal, as well as two Imo State courts in Orlu and Owerri, were attacked by the supposedly unidentified hoodlums, for an equally unidentified reasons.
Truth is that INEC has suffered no fewer than 50 attacks across 15, out of the 36 states of Nigeria, in three years. What appears most disturbing to all patriotic citizens is that Imo State, is topping the ugly chart with a staggering 11 incidents, between 2019 and 2022! This cannot be a good testimonial for the state and its people.
The information surrounding the burning of Owerri Magistrate Court was hazy at press time, but that of Orlu High Court complex, was not. Saturday Vanguard gathered that all the files, exhibits, electrical fittings and furniture, got burnt! It was a sorry sight.
This incident has automatically and stridently emasculated legal practice in Orlu Judicial Division. Lawyers and litigants will, for some time to come, have no court to do their matters, until a panacea is worked out.
Now, take a critical look at this truism: All these damaged, looted, vandalized or completely razed offices or establishments, are public properties, built with tax payers money. It will, with the spiraling inflation, require huge sums of money to replace the facilities, instead of improving on what we already have.
With this, the economy suffers. Unemployment hits the skies. Per capita income drops dangerously and because people must eat, all manner of crime keeps flourishing. Can you see how we jumped into our own Bermuda Triangle? What else can best be described as a disaster?A former Minister of Education, Professor Mrs. Chinwe Obaji, in a telephone conversation, blamed what the country is passing through, on what she called “gross failure of the family system and senseless consumption of hard drugs”.
