The spokesman of the Action Nation Congress(ACN)of Lagos state, Mr. Joe Igbokwe has expressed concern that Igbo people in markets across Lagos state are taking the laws into their hands. He made the observation last weekend in an interview with SaharaTV. Mr. Igbokwe said that the Oladipo market issue hadbeen on Governor Fashola’s desk for two years but Igbo people have refused to listen or respect the committee set up by the government of Lagos State to look into the matter.
“We need to do something to bring order to ourmarkets in Lagos,” Mr. Igbokwe said to SaharaTV’s Rudolf Okonkwo. “Our people are taking laws into their hands. No responsive andresponsible government will take the kind of insult and audacity our people are displaying inLagos. They don’t want to obey constituted authorities. And it is not only Oladipo (market).”
Igbokwe’s worry about the situations in variousmarkets across Lagos came towards the end ofan interview centered on the deportation of some “destitutes” from Lagos state to Anambra state.
“I’ve been embarrassed at what is happening in our markets,” Igbokwe lamented. “Nearly allour markets in Lagos are endangered with a deep crisis of leadership.”
Okonkwo opened the interview by asking Igbokwe about the deportees, how many of them there were and how they were selected for deportation. Citing documents that claimed that many of the deportees were impoverished Igbo people, Okonkwo asked Igbokwe how populations of these destitutes were being counted and accounted for in Lagos State.
To this Igbokwe explained that the Lagos State government has always been especially proactive in taking care of its most destitute inhabitants, ensuring the impoverished were treated with decency and cleaned up. However,he furthered, Lagos State has a duty to its residents to ensure that public safety in the commercial metro is maintained at all times. “What is happening in Lagos concerns security issues and Lagos is just trying to be proactive…we have seen situations where people pretending to be selling oranges turn out to be bomb throwers,” Igbokwe illustrated.
When asked about any efforts by Lagos State to elicit help from the federal government to end such vagrancy and crime, Igbokwe provided no clear answer. This suggests, as Okonkwo illustrated, that Lagos State decided to take action and arrest and hold certain people in “treatment centers” without consulting the federal government or thinking about possible human rights violations.
Pressed further about citizens’ concern over themorality of the measure, Igbokwe offered that this was not the first time this had happened, and expressed surprise that this issue was being taken so seriously. He repeatedly implored the concerned to look at the “bigger picture”, and consider the situation the Lagos State government was put in, a predicament that somewhat justified the “hard decision” to deport.
But being that this situation has occurred twice,citizens must be concerned about the potential for consequential occurrences. While today’s deportees were primarily Igbo “destitutes”, tomorrow they could be anyone, picked in a similarly arbitrary and capricious fashion. How can state security be used to justify clearly divisive and aggressively inhumane measures, against other Nigerians? Why is blatant exclusionary action being upheld by any state?
Regarding the claims of exclusion in Lagos state, Igbokwe stressed that neither himself or Lagos State governor Fashola was intentionallytargeting Igbo people. “I am not an enemy of Igbo people,” he emphasized. “I am a humanist.”
Igbokwe later suggested the Anambra State government must also be investigated about their role in the matter. “This is politics,” he claimed. Referring to the coming governorship elections, he claimed that the Anambra State government’s decision to go to the press about the matter before contacting Lagos State was apolitically-motivated aim. “This is election time, people can do all kinds of things to win an election,” he stated.
Further defending Governor Fashola’s actions, he offered, “governors can issue directives, how they are carried out is another thing. Governors can’t have eyes everywhere.” He went on to also explain that Governor Fashola later apologized for the incident.
The situation, as it seemingly appeared to Igbokwe, was one that was not truly Lagos State’s fault, in fact he suggested that the Anambra state liaison office should carry primary blame for the way the events played out. Lagos State, according to Igbokwe, allegedly reached out to Anambra State about the displaced destitutes but received no response.
“Lagos did what it was supposed to do,” he concluded.