Femi Adesina, media adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, says a good number of Igbo young men are now “fierce man-eating creatures”, lamenting increased insecurity in the South-East region. 

“Godly, enterprising people, vigorous dancers. What then happened, that a good number of the young men are now ogres, fierce man-eating creatures, in the name of a security network? Oh, I miss the South East we used to know,” Mr Adesina said.

The president’s spokesman made this scathing remark in an article published on his Facebook page on Thursday. It came in the aftermath of the killing of some security men in Umunze, a community in Orumba South Local Government Area of Anambra.

Lamenting wanton killings by gunmen in the South-East, Mr Adesina said “each time I read of killings by gunmen in the South East, I go into the doldrums. I get mortified by the sheer waste of precious lives, the wantonness, malevolence and viciousness of it all.

“This is not the South East we used to know. What happened? How did grace turn to disgrace? How did young men, who used to be moved, motivated by sonorous songs and choruses suddenly become bloodthirsty hounds, not distinguishing between friends and foes, good and evil? How do you claim you want to liberate a people, after first shooting them to ribbons?” He added. 

Prolonged agitation for breakaway by Nnamdi Kanu-led Independent People of Biafra, (IPOB) heightened in the South East region in 2015.

The agitation took a horrible turn following the killing of IPOB protesters by Nigerian soldiers in 2016, while the Buhari-led regime failed to investigate or prosecute those behind the killing of the separatist agitators. The regime went on to proscribe the group in 2017. 

Back then, Amnesty International condemned Nigerian security operatives for opening live rounds on unarmed IPOB protesters in South-East Nigeria, killing 150 of unarmed IPOB protesters.