By Sunday Ani
The family of Ngwu Alumona of Umuameh, Aguibeje, Enugu-Ezike in Igbo-Eze North Local Government Area of Enugu State has cried out over the whereabouts of their son, Mr. Chukwudi Godwin Ngwu.
The 42-year-old Godwin, according to his uncle, Mr. Ifeanyi Ngwu, has not been seen since December 2022.
Ngwu, a timber merchant, described the circumstances surrounding his nephew’s disappearance as fussy, stating that the family feared that there might be a threat to his life as a result of which he could have gone into hiding for safety. He noted that until his disappearance, he was one of the educated and courageous youths in his village, who had devoted their time and money to working, amid the widespread insecurity in the area, to build peace and security in the community, until the military’s raid on an alleged Unknown Gunmen’s (UGM’s) camp in the community, and the subsequent arrest of the group’s fleeing female gunrunner, Ms. Amaka Onah, at Imufu, a neighbouring community, on December 23, 2022, truncated their peace-building programme, causing all and sundry to scamper for safety.
“For my nephew, it was a case of double jeopardy. At the height of the security crisis in Igbo-Eze North, hundreds of Enugu-Ezike indigenes, at home and outside, were written to by the ‘Boys’ (as the suspected UGM are called in Enugu-Ezike) and directed to send money to them or face the consequences. Although they did not follow through with their threats in a number of cases, several of those written to did, in fact, come to harm one way or another.
“In the case of my nephew, beside the monetary demand from the UGM, his obvious neutrality in his peace-building efforts had the effect of making his actions suspicious in the eyes of both the ‘Boys’ who believed he was spying on them, and the security agents who could not be convinced that a young, vibrant and well-off young man like him from that community in that part of the country could be neutral.
“But he has always been neutral, neither hobnobbing with the ‘Boys’ nor passing any information about them to security, and was genuinely committed to working with like minds in the community to build peace and security in Aguibeje, his ancestral homeland and a vast agrarian community in Enugu-Ezike with sprawling forests and suspected solid mineral deposits,” he said.
The Igbo-Eze North Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Mr. James Akoh, could not be reached for comments. However, police sources said they had “informally” heard about the young man’s dilemma, but could not officially address it yet.