When State Violence Begets Desperation: Context for the Atrocities in the South-East

The shocking testimonies about killings, ritual desecrations, and mass bravado cannot be read in isolation. To understand how young men came to commit such crimes, we must first follow the chain of events that pushed them deep into the shadows.

For years a pattern of heavy-handed federal operations, selective prosecution, and public spectacles of arrest, abuse and detention created fertile ground for radicalisation. What began for many as a political movement and an assertion of identity was met with a heavy handed brutal security approach that prioritized force, abuse, humiliation and criminalisation over political engagement and redress. When legitimate political space is shut down and leaders are paraded, prosecuted or proscribed without credible, transparent processes, the vacuum that follows is rarely filled by calm voices. It is filled by fear, resentment, paranoia and, ultimately, rage.

Into that vacuum stepped recruiters and opportunists who offered simple answers to complex grievances. Young people, unemployed, marginalised, and confronted daily with stories of perceived injustice, were told that loyalty and violence were the only means of protection. Training camps, clandestine orders and charismatic calls for retribution radicalised a slice of the youth population. Some believed they were defending their communities; others were seduced by the status, ritual mystique and power that violence suddenly conferred.

At the same time, documented brutal abuses by security agents, checkpoints, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial killings and a pervasive sense of being treated as enemies in one’s own land, hardened attitudes. When law enforcement is perceived not as protector but as a brutal predator, the instinct to strike back, to dismantle checkpoints, or to resist by any means becomes, in the eyes of some, an act of survival. That does not excuse murder, it explains how cycles of violence escalate and why insurgent groups find recruits among youth who feel they have nothing left to lose.

But explanation is not exoneration. Ritual killings, massacres, and the targeting of fellow Igbos are monstrous acts that betray the movement’s original aims and wound our communities most of all. Victims remain victims regardless of the claimed motive. Justice for them is non-negotiable. Yet truth and accountability must be applied evenly: for the killers and for the institutions whose policies and conduct fed the spiral.

If we are serious about stopping further descent into lawlessness, the response must be twofold. First, impartial investigations must probe both the radicalisation that led to the metamorphorsis of our youth into armed groups commiting crimes and credible allegations of brutal security-agents abuses. Independent panels, with regional and international observers where appropriate, should map the chain of command on both sides and recommend prosecutions, reforms and reparations. Second, political solutions must reopen channels of engagement: de-escalation, guarantees against political persecution, economic opportunities for vulnerable youth, and a south east security architecture that protects citizens rather than treats them as enemies.

South east leaders cannot wash their hands of this. By aligning reflexively with federal forces instead of constructing inclusive security and political responses, they contributed to the alienation that radicalised a generation. The South-East needs structures that combine legitimate policing, local accountability, and community protection, not militarised suppression that produces fugitives out of citizens.

Above all, our rhetoric must change. Describing these acts solely as “terrorism” without honest examination of causes will only produce more of the same. But neither should analysis become an apology for murder. We must tell a whole truth: that brutal tactics by the state and the radicalisation of youth are both causes and consequences of one another; that survival instincts in a hunted population can generate horrors; and that only through balanced justice, political redress and community rebuilding can we break the cycle.

We must insist on justice for victims, accountability for perpetrators on all sides, and a political roadmap that gives young people hope beyond bullets and charms. Anything less is to invite another generation into the same darkness.

By Duruebube Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu