Femi Adesina, media adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, says the south eastern part of the country is gradually turning into an enclave of vicious cannibals.
In a scathing article on his Facebook page on Friday, Adesina bemoaned the deepening security crisis in the beleaguered south east.
He opined that a good number of Igbo young men are now “fierce man-eating creatures”, noting that the gravity of the security crisis confounds the mind.
“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,” Adesina said.
Adesina’s sensational description and unsettling analysis of the security situation in the south east is coming 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.