By Helen Ochie

Prominent Nigerians, including former President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, John Nnia Nwodo and renowned business mongul, Arthur Eze are bied to grace the launching of the trail blazing book,’A Tale of Ikenga’ today in Abuja

Speaking at a press conference to herald the book launch on Tuesday I Abuja, the author, Professor Emeka Aniagolu described as insensitive the scrapping of history subjects in schools by the Federal Government.

Aniagolu argued that such initiative would deny the younger generation the privilege to know their history and avoid certain issues that went wrong.

The Professor in the Black World Studies of Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio, remarked that the removal of history studies would lead to selective amnesia.

He said: “The scrapping of history is a foolish policy on the part of the Nigerian government and whoever was behind it. There is no society anywhere in the world that has done away with its history because bad things happened in the past.

“You teach history because you want to remember what went wrong and so that you do not repeat the mistake. You do not consciously decide to induce a form of amnesia in the society which creates the context of possibility of repeating itself to remember what happened.

“Everybody must be taught the history of this country and history should and must be rehabilitated into the educational system. Or we will have people suffering from amnesia.”

According to him, the Tale of Ikenga traces the historiography of the Igbo people and correct some misconceptions, adding that it would serve as a memory jogger to the older folks.

The 9th President-General Ohanaeze Ndigbo, John Nwodo; a businessman and philanthropist, Arthur Eze, among others are billed to grace the occasion.

By Obinna F. Nwachukwu

THE OTOKOTO HOTEL

At the time of its existence, Otokoto Hotel was located in an upscale area of Owerri, specifically the Amakohia side, and it was a favourite location for the rich and wealthy youths to meet, drink and have un.

The hotel was made up of three buildings, (3,5 & 6 Stories each, one behind the other).
It was owned by Chief Vincent Duru, the father of Obidiozor Duru, the leader of the Black Scorpions secret cult that was responsible for robberies and kidnapping of children in the state.

Before this horrible incident, the people of Owerri were already very mad at the bizarre actions of some loud, extremely powerful and obscenely wealthy individuals in the state. These people were highly-connected and oppressed everyone wherever they went.

Rumours were rife as to their very dark dealings and even the possibility of ritual murders and killings but no one really had any hard evidence yet or probably those who had it were too jittery to say anything.

Whatever the case, these rich people who had no real tangible or easily traceable sources of wealth kept on living large and instilling an atmosphere of terror and fear on the Owerri populace.

This was how Owerri was described at that time:
When the people heard of what happened inside the hotel to the boy, Owerri exploded with anger and resentment that had been piling up for years. For two straight days, the people of Owerri trooped out in their thousands, protesting and rioting.

Not even the strong-arm tactics of the Imo State military administrator, Colonel Tanko Zubairu, could stop them (the administration of the former military governor Navy Captain James Aneke was already seen as corrupt, 419-based and even complicit in the protection of the Otokoto men.

They simply ran amok and the national and international media focused on the Owerri riots of 24th and 25th of September, 1996, also known as the Otokoto riots. The people felt they had had more than enough.

Any property suspected to belong to the ’Otokoto men’ were set ablaze, from posh hotels to luxury supermarkets, their flashy automobiles, palatial mansions, everything was destroyed and burnt to the ground. Any suspected member of the Otokoto gang was lynched.

Prior to the riots, the youthful members of the Otokoto gang & other secret societies (believed to be offshoots of campus secret cults) involved in ritual killings went everywhere oppressing others with their ill-gotten wealth and making other hardworking youths look clueless & silly.

The Owerri public had no faith in the police and as a matter of fact, the commissioner of police at that time, David Abure, was seen as the personification of corruption who wined and dined with the evil ones.

Following the arrest of Ekeanyanwu, he was remanded in police custody while awaiting trial. But while he was in the police custody, magic happened! He was killed by food poisoning 4days after.

He killed the boy on Thursday and by Sunday morning, he was found Dead. But luckily for the interrogators, before he was killed, Ekeanyanwu confessed and mentioned Leonard Unaogu as the brain behind the ritual killing syndicate.

He confessed that the ritual killing ring was a well-organized machine that specialized in the harvesting of human body parts and sold them to those interested in using them for rituals and all the usual nonsense they claimed to be using them for. He also said it was Unaogu who ordered him to get a human head.

Reports have it that the Otokoto saga had been in place as far back as 1976.

Confessional statements revealed that no one was spared at the Otokoto Hotel. Innocent guests and unsuspecting travellers who lodged at the hotel were drugged or attacked in the middle of their sleep and hacked to death after which they were cut into pieces for sale.

Police officers who swooped upon the hotel discovered not only the shallow grave containing that of the little boy but also graves containing other victims with their decomposing and dismembered corpses.
No one knows the exact exhumed at Otokoto Hotel was up to 24 bodies. Some were buried at inconspicuous locations such as under the flowerbeds. Such evil, such horror!

The man that Ekeanyanwu mentioned before he was poisoned to death, Leonard Unaogu, was a business tycoon. And he was the junior brother to Laz Unaogu, a serving minister under Abacha.
Leonard Unaogu was eventually arrested by the police.

When the police arrested Unaogu, he lied with a straight face that he never knew anyone called Innocent Ekeanyanwu and that he was not even in Owerri when the crime was committed, saying he was in Lagos.

The trial started on the 9th of December, 1996, with Hillary Ngozi Opara as the first prosecution witness.

Nine people testified before Justice S.O Ekpe, who took over from Justice Gabriel Ojiako, the retired chief judge of Imo State, during the trial. The court also admitted the confessional statement of Innocent Ekeanyanwu.

Margaret Acholonu, a receptionist at the hotel, stated that two spots were dug at the hotel premises and it was from the second one that the body of Okoronkwo was exhumed. She also implicated Chief Duru.

She also said that on that fateful day, she saw Ekeanyanwu with a black bag and he told her he was going to his village at Eziama

A sergeant, Sunday Onwucheka, told the court he was in the office when Ekeanyanwu was arrested with a fresh human head of the innocent boy.
According to Onwucheka, before the police took Ekeanyanwu to Otokoto Hotel, the crime scene, he confessed to killing the boy at Mba River in Ikeduru and dumped the body inside the river. The police followed the false trail but found nothing at the Mba River.

So at about 7:00 pm on the 20th of September, they returned to Owerri. The following Monday, they continued with their investigation and took him to Otokoto Hotel where the headless body of the boy had already been identified before the police team arrived.

On 20th August 1997,nine police officers were docked before  a senior magistrate court in Owerri over the murder of Ekeanyanwu. They were: Ifeanyi Anozie, an assistant commissioner of police, Chukwu Obasi, an assistant superintendent of police, Kevin Ezirim, Christian Nnazi,
Clifford Odiaka, Felix Nnorom, Christopher Aguobi,
Ignatius Igwe, James Ibezere and Josephat Nwosu

The case moved in a snail speed untill 14th October 1997, over a year, and after series of adjournments, absence of lawyers, the Presiding judge, suspects or even the retirement of judges or their transfer etc.

When the case finally resumed, many were pissed off. Leonard Unaogu, the minister’s brother, was transported in a new station wagon from the prison to the court like a royalty. Vincent Duru and other suspects were brought in a Black Maria from prison to the court, with handcuffs.

Duru protested the preferential treatment given to Unaogu.
Many judges handled the case. First, it was Gabriel Ojiaku, then Simeon Ekpe who was almost done with the prosecution until he was elevated to Court of Appeal.
Then finally on 28th April 1999, Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme. Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme Judgment:
She Sentenced All the seven suspects to death, they were:

Chief Vincent Duru. The owner of the Otokoto Hotel and Unaogu denied knowing each other, but Justice Nwosu-Iheme said that was a lie. He appealed the sentence in 2012 but he was unlucky as the sentence was upheld by the Appeal Court
Leonard Unaogu: He would later die some years ago at the Port Harcourt Prisons in what has been described as very mysterious circumstances.

BLACK SCORPION SECRETE CULT:

After judgment, the convicts all moved to the Port Harcourt Prisons in the middle of February 2003 pending their execution.

Prior to the case of Okoronkwo, several children had disappeared in Owerri, never to be found to date. Some were kidnapped and their wealthy parents will pay a ransom.

It was so serious that in May 1995, the daughter of Dr Okoh, a Physician in the city was kidnapped by the Black Scorpions, one of the elite secret cult, asked the doctor to pay $12000 before the girl Will be released.

Eventually, the police stormed the hideout of the Black Scorpions and months later, the leader of the cult, Obidiozor Duru (who happens to also be the son of Chief Vincent Duru, owner of the Otokoto Hotel) and Amanze Onuoha, were both arrested.
They were brought before the Imo State Robbery and Firearms Tribunal on the charges of armed robbery, a capital offence.

Businessman and politician Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu were also mentioned in the saga but he denied ever knowing anything about the case.
What happened next was nothing but a mockery of justice. Duru and Onuoha were treated like royalties in the prisoner rather than criminals awaiting the death penalty.

They got the most liberal visiting privileges, ate food cooked and brought from their homes. They were like lords and Duru (a PhD holder in psychology from California State University) even impregnated one of his female Jailers and did a ‘traditional wedding’ with her before he completed his case.

And while they were incarcerated, the rate of child kidnappings in Imo dropped drastically.

In 1997, six people were executed by a firing squad following a judgement by Justice Emmanuel Nnodim. One of those killed was Obidiozor, the son of Chief Vincent Duru, leader of Black Scorpion Cult.

WHERE IS OTOKO (Vincent Duru) NOW?:

Chief Vincent Duru(alias Otokoto), one of the men convicted in the celebrated case of the ritual murder of September 19, 1996, in Owerri, Imo State, was reportedly hanged.

His execution took place on Sunday, November 13, 2016. This was 13 years after his 2003 conviction. This was after the government approved the execution warrant.

During the administration of Ikedi Ohakim as governor, he tried to revoke the right of occupancy of the police to the confiscated Otokoto properties but people were said to have kicked against it.

The Duru family was also said to have approached Governor Rochas Okorocha over the confiscated property saying the property belonged to the Otokoto Group and not Duru. Okorocha stylishly brushed the matter aside.

Each time the issue of returning the confiscated property to the Otokoto family, Owerri people rise and protests.

CONCLUSION:

Nigeria is still in the grips of ritual killers, almost two decades after the Otokoto saga. The same factors that gave birth to the 1996 Otokoto ritual killings are still in place today: poverty, irrational beliefs in supernatural powers that lead people to believe money can be made from flesh without doing any work, weak/corrupt law enforcement agencies and a super-slow judicial system.

The presence of these factors explains why after bloody Otokoto saga, the country still had to face the Okija/Ogwugwu shrine saga in Anambra State and the Soka forest horror of Oyo State.

The Nigerian disease is still there – yet to be healed.
We should stop our great pf “Getting Rich Quick” Syndrome.

Otokoto happened in as far back as1996 when many Youths who are involved in Yahoo-Yahoo, Yahoo Plus, Ritual Money etc, were not even born then.

Funny enough, all those who were involved in Human Ritual Killing, doesn’t end well. This is because ‘THE DEVIL HAS NO FREE GIFT’.
So let us all be careful and God fearing .

By Bolanle BOLAWOLE

If you have been following the story, before Dr. Segun Osoba’s lecture to the students of the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University (“Great Ife”), Ile-Ife, on 1st February, 1974 in commemoration of the 3rd anniversary of the police killing of Kunle Adepeju, an undergraduate student of the University of Ibadan during a peaceful student protest, an ideological argument, as someone called it, took place between Osoba and Professor L. Beverley Halstead. After the lecture, Halstead still would not let sleeping dogs lie but dragged the matter with Dr. Osoba.

Titled “On Dr. Osoba’s drama”, he again said the following: “The 1st of February is an occasion of commemoration of the death of a student, Adekunle Adepeju, at Ibadan, killed by a police bullet during a demonstration in 1971. In Ife it was known that on this occasion there was to be a demonstration against the university authorities, the Vice-Chancellor in particular, over a wide series of issues. Dr. Osoba was scheduled to speak to the students on “Student Power” immediately prior to the march to the VC, bearing placards which had little relevance to the death of a student three years previously.

“This was an explosive situation charged with emotion that worried many people, including students. By good fortune, I met Dr. Osoba in the Staff Club where I was acting as chairman at the Geology conference dinner. One cannot but commend Dr. Osoba’s power of recall even though certain critical items seemed to have slipped his memory. I recall expressing my opinion that I felt it was inappropriate in such an explosive situation to be addressing students on the subject of student power; inappropriate to the extent of being irresponsible.

“I went so far as to suggest that if matters got out of hand, he would bear much of the responsibility for this. His reply was that if the mob got out of hand, it would have nothing to do with him – his conscience would be clear. I failed to understand his secretiveness over the text of his address – if it were so innocent why could it not be seen? I cannot understand Dr. Osoba’s motive in all this. He knew that people were worried about what might happen but he was not interested in allaying anyone’s fears; merely scoring a few cheap debating points: His first responsibility is to his conscience, as he said. In the meantime many people spent a worried night wondering what the morrow would bring.

“We knew that violence was intended; in retrospect, we know a serious crisis was averted and that Dr. Osoba merely paraded his conscience before the students. Thank you, Dr. Osoba”.

Osoba, not one to take prisoners, responded in kind: “Dear Professor Halstead: Your letter of 13th February, 1974 is an unequalled achievement in self-exposure. Having denied on Thursday, 31st January, 1974 any responsibility to the students of this university beyond teaching them Biology, you have now in this letter admitted, without apparently being aware of it, that the only other responsibility you owe them is to spy on them and, on the basis of this espionage work, ascribe all sorts of spurious motives to their actions and those of your colleagues on the academic staff who would not spy on students or treat them as congenitally irresponsible and destructive mass of people.

“Unless I was maintaining a spy-ring among the students, how was I to know, as you and some others apparently claim to know by the evening of 31st January, 1974, that on the following day ‘there was to be a demonstration against the university authorities, the Vice-chancellor in particular, over a wide series of issues’? How was I to know in advance, like you, that after my address they were to ‘march to the V-C, bearing placards which had little relevance to the death of a student three years previously’?

“You claim in relation to my motives in addressing the students that ‘he (i . e. Osoba) knew that people were worried about what might happen but he was not interested in allaying anyone’s fears, merely scoring a few cheap debating points… In the meantime many people spent a worried night wondering what the morrow would bring’. The presumption, even crass dishonesty, of this kind of assertion is amazing in a man who, by his own admission, is committed only to his own professional career. If one were to dissipate one’s limited nervous and emotional resources in allaying self-induced fears reinforced by the testimony of spies, then, one would be likely to become ‘nuts’ like those being haunted by the hobgoblin of their own mind.

“Professsor Halstead and his crowd ‘knew that violence was intended; in retrospect (they) know a serious crisis was averted…’ Professor Halstead’s power of divination with respect to planning and averting violence are all-embracing: they are both predictive and retroactive! Even the British M15 and M16, the American C.I.A. and F.B.I. and the Soviet KGB may have one or two new tricks to learn from him and the other wizards of espionage and counter-espionage!

“In Professor Halstead’s near-divine wisdom, he knew that ‘Dr. Osoba merely paraded his conscience before the students’ but failed to tell us what his own stilled conscience – some amount of parading and airing of it, even before students – might help somewhat in reactivating and making it tick again.

“One can only hope that this university community is not paranoid to the point that it cannot isolate self-identified spies and thereby render them irrelevant to its main business of inculcating into our young men and women the habit of learning and the virtues of responsible citizenship in a hate-free, fear-free environment”

We still have in our universities today robust exchanges such as was witnessed between Osoba and Halstead. That, perhaps, is where the similarities end. In Osoba and Halstead’s own days, university senior teaching staff members belonged to the upper middle class and could afford the luxuries associated with that class. No more! A preponderance of that class is today numbered among the struggling and the poor who cannot afford the basic necessities of decent living. And the free fall hasn’t ended yet!

The university environment is no longer as conducive to teaching and learning as it used to be. Lecture theatres and office spaces are crammed beyond belief; hostel accommodation on campus takes only a fraction of students; and the condition of living there also beggars belief; the library and laboratories are archaic; lecturers are ill-motivated and the academic calendar for most public universities have been disrupted as a result of incessant strike action by university workers – teaching and non-teaching staff alike.

Unlike in the days of the founding fathers of Nigeria, appropriate funding of education is no longer the priority of the ruling class. In summary, the universities today are a shadow of their original self; the quality of the education they dispense cannot but be similarly affected. As with other sectors of our national life, a Marshall Plan of sorts is needed to bail out the education sector from its doldrums that border on imminent collapse. But will they? NOW CONCLUDED.

FEEDBACK

Re: Dangote’s refinery and Nigerians’ great expectations

Sir, good write-up as ever (but) you only appear to avoid hitting President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as hard as he deserves this time around! All the identified shortfalls start and end with ill-motivated and irresponsible leadership. All PBAT seems to have as his reason for desiring and ascending unto the office (of president) was just to add the nomenclature and title of “President” to his name! Empty, purposeless and without focus! Like you pointed out in several of your earlier write-ups, speaking truth to power: (he is) a man that leaps before looking, and he acts before thinking! Making excuses for PBAT’s non-performance is, in all sincerity, needless, sir!

Dangote acting capitalist/monopolist; Nigeria’s refineries not functional; NNPC turning supervisory against the objectives stated in the enabling Act that established it and its parasitic existence; Dangote refinery dashing the hopes of Nigerians; manning our porous borders to avoid subsidizing neighbouring countries and giving smugglers the advantage – all these and many more, without gainsaying, is accounted for by just a single person and single act: irresponsible leadership!

It is not about Dangote, NNPC, illegal supply/siphoning/diversion to neighbouring countries and the likes, but it is about the President’s (lack of) political will. Except we are saying it is you and me that should check all the evil and anti-citizen acts going on in the NNPC or we are the ones to address our porous borders when we have a President and Commander-in-Chief in place (who is) acting in trust for us as a nation!

What a gross shame that what a whole nation of over 200 million people could not achieve with all the resources at her beck and call has now been achieved by a single individual taking advantage of our irresponsible and ineffective leadership!

Do we need to remind PBAT to do something about our refineries! Is the task of building a new refinery, attainable by an individual, truly an uphill and herculean task for a whole nation? Was it not the resources of this nation that Dangote took advantage of to build his refinery? Should Tinubu merely watch as NNPC wrestles with Dangote to the peril of the citizens he claims to lead?

Can’t Tinubu have anyone to advise him that the current NNPC leadership has outlived its usefulness and should be disbanded? – Awodire Oyewole Ayo.

My abridged response: I wish you get to a position where you will need to deal with diverse interests! It is not as easy as we see it from outside. Nigeria’s problems are bigger than Tinubu. I wish and pray they will push him hard enough for him to abandon his conciliatory moves and put his foot down on all issues where he is bending over backward to please interest groups. I wish and pray also that they will frustrate him hard enough for him to give up on Nigeria and say, “to your tents, O Israel!”

Take it from me: Nigeria’s problems cannot be solved from Abuja or by anyone in Abuja. Put whoever you like there, they will only get wiser after they leave office. Ask Obasanjo. Ask Jonathan. Ask even Buhari! The forces holding Nigeria down will not allow the right things to be done. Presidents are no islands. Maybe they know or control up to 10% of what happens in their government. Patience told us Jonathan was caged by those around him. Aisha told us Buhari was a stranger in his own government.

Why was MKO Abiola not allowed to rule? Maybe because he prematurely divulged the secrets of how he would govern: That he would act independently of the IMF and World Bank and that once he holds CBN with one hand and NNPC with another, Nigerians could go and sleep! Have these four (IMF, World Bank, NNPC and CBN) not remained our headache?

In my view, Tinubu’s error – if I can call it that – is that he chose to tread where angels fear to. He wants to solve Nigeria’s problems. Either he is cocksure of himself or he underated the enormity and complexities of Nigeria’s hydra-headed problems. Those benefiting from the system as it is will fight tooth-and-nail to maintain, even further consolidate and advance, their advantage.

Now, after a year in the saddle, Tinubu should know better. He must begin to hold the bull by the horns and step on toes. To do that, he needs more of the courage he summoned on his first day in office when he announced that fuel subsidy is gone!