Extrajudicial Killings, Official Silence: Pressure Mounts on Soludo as Death Toll Rises in Anambra

By Olisemeka Sony

From Mgbakwu to Onitsha, a pattern of lethal force and absent accountability is fuelling public anger and demands for action.

As dusk approaches on that fateful April 30, 2026, 26-year-old Chinyeaka Ike stepped out of his home in Amaeze village, Mgbakwu in Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra. His wife, said to be heavily pregnant with their first child, expected him to return before nightfall. His ailing mother also waited for her only son to be back home, as she always did. But he never returned.

His life was allegedly cut short by operatives of Agunaechemba (Operation UdoGaAchi) and the the Special Anti-Tout Squad (SASA), established and maintained with tax payers’ funds to protect lives and property, among others. No weapon was recovered from him. No formal criminal charge was made against him. And no official report has so far been made to explain the rationale for using lethal force to cut short his life.

“They killed him like an animal,” a relative said quietly the next day. “No question. No warning. Just bullets.”

Hours later, hundreds of youths and residents of Mgbakwu carried his body—wrapped, blood still visible—on a 10-kilometre march to the Government House, popularly known as Light House, in Awka in a peaceful protest. Their message was clear and loud: justice, not statements is urgently needed from the solution Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo. The reason for this blunt demand is not far-fetched: Chinyeaka’s killing is not an aberration. It is part of a pattern, a recurring decimal in the state security law enforcement traditional.

A Security Architecture Without Restraint

Across Anambra, multiple state-linked enforcement units—Agunechemba (Operation Udo Ga-Achi), SASA, also known as Ndi-Akodo, Operation Clean and Healthy Anambra, OCHA Brigade, and Anambra State Road Transport Management Agency, ARTMA—operate with overlapping mandates and minimal transparency. Their stated objective is clear: dismantle touting networks, illegal revenue systems, and violent gangs, criminals etc. In practice, their record is more troubling.

In March 2025, a tailor in Mgbakwu was killed by a stray bullet while seated in her shop. Witnesses insist she had no connection to any criminal activity.

On June 12, 2025, a 12-year-old boy near Biafra Market in Onitsha was shot while heading to a public toilet. “He was just a child,” a trader who saw the incident recalled. “There was no chase, no confrontation.”

In August 2025, a serving corps member, Jennifer Elohor, was publicly stripped, beaten, and harassed in Oba despite presenting identification. “I kept telling them who I was,” she later recounted. “They didn’t care.”

On September 9, 2025, gunfire during an OCHA Brigade clash near Onitsha Main Market left at least four dead, including a pregnant woman.

Earlier, in December 2024, ARTMA officials allegedly assaulted a commercial driver into a coma after repeated exposure to tear gas.

Each case triggered official concern. None has produced visible accountability. What emerges is not a sequence of isolated excesses, but a systemic failure of control.

The Accountability Gap

Governor Soludo introduced Agunechemba in early 2025 as a corrective force against insecurity. The policy rationale is defensible. The execution is increasingly difficult to justify.

Security institutions operate on incentives. At present, the incentive structure appears permissive: force is deployed with minimal procedural constraint, and consequences—if any—are opaque.

“When nothing happens after a killing, it becomes policy,” said a human rights advocate in Awka. “Not officially, but effectively.”

Investigations have been announced in several cases, including Chinyeaka’s, by the Anambra state government . Security agencies such as the police and DSS are often referenced. Yet the public record lacks prosecutions, disciplinary disclosures, or judicial outcomes.

Without enforcement of consequences, oversight mechanisms collapse into rhetoric.

The Human Cost

Beyond policy analysis lies a simpler reality: families are being left behind. Chinyeaka’s wife will give birth without him. His mother, by multiple accounts, has not fully processed the loss.

“He was her only son,” a neighbour said. “Everything depended on him.”

In Onitsha, the parents of the 12-year-old boy still struggle with the randomness of his death. “We sent him on an errand,” a family member said. “We did not send him to die.”

These are not edge cases. They are recurring outcomes in environments where force is insufficiently regulated.

What Must Change This Time:

The policy response expected from the Solution government led by Professor Soludo himself is not abstract. It should be practical and measurable by Ndị Anambra who voted for his second term overwhelmingly barely five months ago.

The first general expectations is that Governor Soludo will not shield the perpetrators of these crimes. So, the government must identify and publicly name officers involved in fatal incidents. Internal discipline is insufficient where criminal liability may apply.

Second, prosecution: where evidence meets threshold, cases should proceed in open court. Administrative reassignment does not meet the standard of justice.

Third, has to do with oversight. The government should establish an independent civilian review mechanism with investigatory authority. Its composition must be credible—legal practitioners, civil society, and community representatives with statutory backing.

Ndị Anambra will expect the solution government to enforce visible identification for all operatives and introduce mandatory recording protocols during operations. Anonymity enables abuse. Already, the Anambra State Police Command had expressed reservations with the rampant cases of mask wearing local security operatives deployed for duties across the state. This patctice should be banned.

The fifth step is that Soludo government should publish periodic use-of-force data—discharges, injuries, fatalities—with case status updates. Transparency is a deterrent.
Finally, compensation frameworks for victims’ families should be formalized and automatic where state liability is established. These are baseline governance controls, not extraordinary measures.

A Test of Committed Leadership:

Governor Soludo’s stated objective is a “secure and liveable” Anambra. The current trajectory risks undermining both. A security system that citizens fear more than criminal actors erodes legitimacy. Once that threshold is crossed, compliance declines, and enforcement becomes more volatile.

“We want security,” one protester at the Government House said. “But not like this.”

The protest that followed Chinyeaka’s death was not insurgent. It was civic. It asked for recognition, accountability, and corrective action.

The decision point is immediate. Either the state reasserts control over its enforcement units through law and transparency, or it tacitly accepts a model where outcomes are unpredictable and often irreversible. For families already affected, the distinction is no longer theoretical. It is final.

(Special Report for AnambraDaily)