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.



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/07/emenike-ihekwaba/

supporter of APC killers on rampage

Hmm men like Rochas, God is watching you on HD.

Person papa just disappear since when ?

My God am afraid for nija

May God save us all!!!

okparaugo: Person papa just disappear since when ?

Since August 2012....Ganjaweed style

hushmail: My God am afraid for nija

May God save us all!!!

Vote APC and see what's going on in Naija right now is just child's play.