Politics
Imo: Uncertainty over arrest of ‘Gen.’ Gentle
... as experts decry govt strategy in the North
When news broke on September 16 that troops of the Nigerian Army’s 34 Artillery Brigade, in collaboration with sister security agencies, had arrested Ifeanyi Eze Okorienta, better known by his chilling alias General Gentle de Yahoo, residents of Okigwe, Imo State heaved a collective sigh of relief.
For years, the man described as the “deadliest criminal in Imo State” had tormented communities across Ihiala, Orsu, Arondizuogu, and Okigwe, leaving behind a trail of corpses, deserted villages, and broken families. His recent execution of three of his boys, as captured in a viral video, sent shivers down the spine of many, provided further glimpses into the dark heart of the man, who has come to embody terror East of the Niger.
But almost a week later, the initial jubilation has given way to scepticism. Gentle, alleged commander of the so-called Biafra Liberation Army (BLA), has neither been paraded alive nor displayed dead. Neither the police nor the army has released photographic or video proof of his capture. That silence has fed a wave of doubt across Imo, stoking fears that the kingpin may still be at large.
Amid the confusion, a video of him mocking the Army and the DSS, while boasting that he could not be arrested went viral last week, feeding into the fear that he could indeed be very much at large.
“Right now, I don’t know what to believe,” said Nonso Opara, a displaced trader who fled Okigwe to Umuahia. “I was so happy when I first got the news that he was arrested, but now I’m not so sure.”
Herdsmen menace to insurgency
The rise of Gentle and his ilk is entangled with the trajectory of insecurity in the South East. Until 2016, the region was widely regarded as Nigeria’s most peaceful zone – as per United Nations Development Programme. That began to change dramatically after a spate of killings blamed on armed Fulani herdsmen, including the gruesome massacre in Nimbo, Uzo Uwani LGA of Enugu State.
Public outrage met a muted response from state governors, whose attempt to set up a joint security outfit, Ebube Agu, faltered amid political bickering. Into that vacuum stepped Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). In December 2020, he launched the Eastern Security Network (ESN), initially presented as a militia to defend farmlands.
Fuelled by anger over the federal government’s heavy-handed crackdown on IPOB protests and Kanu’s fiery rhetoric, ESN quickly attracted hundreds of radicalized young men. Camps sprouted in forests across the zone. Skirmishes with herders gave way to clashes with security forces. By the time Kanu was rearrested in June 2021, the region was already sliding into open insurgency.
When IPOB’s Directorate of State rescinded its order of weekly sit-at-home protests, Simon Ekpa, Kanu’s self-styled disciple in Finland, seized the opportunity. He commandeered armed factions, rebranded them the Biafra Liberation Army, and began enforcing sit-at-home with blood. Gentle, a former lieutenant of slain ESN commander Nwokike Anyinayo Andy, alias Ikonso, emerged as his most notorious field commander.
Reign of terror
Gentle’s rise was swift and bloody. After Ikonso was killed by security forces in April 2021 – a move that triggered the burning of Governor Hope Uzodimma’s Omuma country home – Gentle consolidated power. With lieutenants, such as Onyekachi Isaiah, alias Angel Makeup, he unleashed carnage across Ihiala, Orsu, Arondizuogu, and Okigwe.
“All the public schools in Ihube, my community, have been shut down since 2022,” narrated Nnaemeka Obiaraeri, an investment banker and businessman. “We are practically privately funding primary and secondary education in my community through the Methodist Mission
“These terrorists destroyed a factory I spent over N98 million to establish in my community to create jobs and wealth for the people. They attacked and burnt my factory trucks and torched my community home, for daring to campaign for Peter Obi when they said “no election and campaign in Okigwe.” This was a community I labored and sacrificed the most part of my youth for building up
“Here was a community where I built three bungalows for three widows, empowered the youths massively, gave out hundreds of scholarships, tens of buses and vehicles, built boreholes, energised transformers, and fixed roads for them with my private funds. I have never deliberately, directly, and indirectly offended anyone, victimized anyone, or oppressed anyone .
“No one can accuse me of any wrong doing in the whole of Okigwe town. I have always stood firm in defence of the poor and oppressed. As a youth , I risked my life to oppose the political bandits in Imo state, as I still do till today.
“Yet, these hoodlums in their satanic and dumb desire to flex criminal muscle chose to desecrate and destroy our land. Criminals and terrorists hid under a struggle to brutally destroy our land, and some diaspora g000ats are still supporting and funding them.”
By 2023, communities lived in dread. Kidnappings soared, schools were shut and commerce died. Families fled ancestral homes. In July this year, gunmen massacred about 17 people in Arondizuogu.
Soon after, a leaked voice note allegedly from Gentle to ‘Angel Makeup’ detailed how to stage such attacks and blame them on Fulani herders. Gentle later admitted the voice was his but claimed it was an old recording.
“I lost six direct cousins, three killed by security forces and unknown gunmen, three disappeared,” recalled Bob Okoroji, an Imo-born lawyer. “They were murdered in their homes, not in any camp.”
Okoroji accused the Buhari administration of weaponizing counter-insurgency: “It was carefully crafted and fully funded by Buhari’s government. Initially meant to degrade IPOB, it later expanded to eliminating Igbo youths of military age. Heads of security agencies became stupendously rich. Buhari used mercenaries like Asari [Dokubo] for cover missions. Some Igbo politicians collaborated, seeing it as their ladder to power.”
Whether or not all of Okoroji’s claims hold, few dispute the devastation wrought by the conflict. Once-vibrant villages now stand desolate. Owerri, famed as the East’s leisure capital, now shuts down by 8p.m.
“The hospitality industry has practically collapsed,” said Mr. Martins, a journalist in the city. “Show promoters have moved to Asaba. Businesses are no longer moving as they used to.”
The controversial ‘arrest’
According to military reports, the September 16 raid on Gentle’s hideout in Aku-Ihube, Okigwe yielded one English pistol, 120 rounds of 7.62mm special ammunition, 25 rounds of NATO rounds, six mobile phones, police and military uniforms, and a German flag. A workshop for dismantling stolen vehicles was uncovered, and 10 motorcycles destroyed.
Yet doubts persist. Gentle has not been paraded. The police statement issued days later on Friday was silent on him, instead announcing other breakthroughs, including the arrest of 789 suspects for crimes ranging from terrorism to child trafficking in two months.
“If he’s arrested, Gov. Hope Uzodimma would have immediately done a state broadcast,” Martins argued. “The military would have paraded him, and if he was killed they would have shown us his remains. As it stands, Gentle is the deadliest criminal in Imo State. People were initially jubilant, but now apprehension is setting in.”
The police commissioner, Aboki Danjuma, highlighted other counter-insurgency successes, including the arrest of IPOB/ESN sub-commanders and the rescue of kidnapped victims. He thanked Governor Uzodimma and IGP Kayode Egbetokun for their support. But his omission of Gentle has fuelled speculation that the warlord may still be on the run.
Double standards and resentment
Beyond Imo, Gentle’s case has reignited a broader grievance in the South East: that federal authorities treat armed groups in the region with brute force while negotiating with bandits and insurgents in the North.
Human rights lawyer, Malcolm Omirhobo recently captured this sentiment: “Nigerian authorities cannot be prosecuting Nnamdi Kanu while negotiating ‘peace deals’ with wanted bandit leaders. It exposes double standards in the government’s approach to justice.”
For many residents, the contrast is glaring. Bandits who abduct schoolchildren in the North often receive amnesty, cash, and reintegration programs. In the South East, young men linked to IPOB are hunted, killed, or detained indefinitely. The absence of dialogue, critics say, has entrenched alienation and radicalisation.
Public affairs analyst, Dr. Mojid Dahiru, faulted the northern leadership for what he described as a lack of political will to confront banditry head-on, accusing some governors of complicity in the menace during an appearance on Nigeria Info FM last week.
According to him, the constant reference to “non-kinetic approaches” is a dangerous diversion from the constitutional duty of the state to protect lives and property. “There is no such thing as a non-kinetic approach when you are faced with insurgency,” he argued.
“Non-kinetic tools – such as good governance, arts, culture, and civic orientation – are useful in promoting national cohesion, but when armed groups take up weapons against the state, the only legitimate response is to deploy the full might of the state to defeat them.”
Dahiru dismissed the frequent amnesty initiatives for bandits as unconstitutional and counterproductive. He stressed that the Nigerian Constitution does not permit governors to negotiate with killers.
“If you raise arms to kill one person, the law is clear, you must face justice. There is no provision for negotiation or amnesty. Any governor who offers amnesty to bandits is committing a crime and should be prosecuted after leaving office,” he said.
He warned that by emboldening bandits with state patronage, northern leaders are enabling their spread into North Central states like Kogi and Kwara, with a trajectory towards the South.
“You cannot rehabilitate a bandit whose sole motivation is money. Once he has tested it, he will not stop until he is neutralized,” Dahiru maintained.
Rejecting comparisons with the Niger Delta militancy, Dahiru noted that the two crises are fundamentally different. “The Niger Delta militants rose in response to decades of environmental degradation and economic injustice in a region that sustains the nation’s economy. They targeted government infrastructure to make a political statement, not innocent civilians. Even then, amnesty was only granted under the combined weight of military pressure and negotiations that acknowledged the state’s failure,” he explained.
“In contrast, Fulani banditry is not driven by injustice or deprivation. There is no environmental degradation, no economic exploitation by the state. It is pure criminality. Yet, instead of confronting it, leaders in the region continue to play politics, making excuses and offering amnesty that only emboldens them. Time and again, these gestures have collapsed, and as history shows, when you keep feeding bandits, the day will come when they will challenge the state itself,” he warned, citing Sudan as an example, where former armed groups now battle the government.
But for Kenneth Ikonne, lawyer and public affairs analyst, terror is not a national cake, and what happens in the North cannot be used to excuse the activities of terrorists in the East.
“Even in Northern Nigeria, many terrorists have already been mowed down by the the Nigerian security services, contrary to narratives being spun by enablers of terror in the Southeast,” Ikonne wrote in a viral Facebook post titled, ‘TERROR IS NOT A NATIONAL CAKE!’
“But even if it is true that in Northern Nigeria daredevil terrorists are being cuddled and rewarded, instead of being hunted down and eliminated, that’s a huge disservice to the North; it is not an oddity people of the Southeast should wish for themselves.
“After all, terror is not a national cake that must be dished out “equitably”!”
Between fear and fragile hope
For now, there is an uneasy calm in Okigwe and surrounding areas. Residents say the lull is only because Gentle’s gang is believed to be on the run, if they have not been arrested. Few dare to believe the nightmare is over.
“For now there’s not been any incident because we think they are on the run,” said Martins. “But everybody is apprehensive.”
Even as security agencies announced scores of arrests and rescues, trust between the state and its citizens remains thin. Without transparency on Gentle’s fate, the uncertainty lingers. And without a coherent political strategy that balances justice with dialogue, insecurity in the South East risks festering long after one man’s story is concluded.
As one weary resident put it: “The costliest peace is still cheaper than the cheapest war. But right now, we are not even sure if peace has really come.”