The accusations against James Nwafor are very significant in many ways. It shows that you may seem to get away with evil deeds, but you never really do get away. As the leader of Awkuzu SARS, James Nwafor was a god, albeit a very cruel god. He killed as he liked and nobody could stop him. Today, he is no god. He is a miserable creature hiding in fear for his life. It turned out that many of those he wasted their lives were indeed far more brave than he.
In the era of the social media, James Nwafor’s problem is magnified ten fold. His entire family is being dragged into it. His son who is a law student and his daughters now know that their father is a mass murderer. It will hunt them forever.
Nothing will please me more than James Nwafor being tried publicly and condemned for the many lives he destroyed. He is a real monster.
But there is a truly controversial part to Nwafor’s story. That has to do with how much of Nwafor’s activities was known to the Chief Security Officer of the State where he operated. One name difficult to mention because he has many devoted supporters is Governor Peter Obi. Could hundreds of people be executed extrajudicially or disappeared by one police precinct without some knowledge of the Governor? Does it mean that none of the victims’ families ever complained?
Let us assume that James Nwafor and his men killed only 100 men each year that Peter Obi was Governor. That will be 800 men killed during his 8-year tenure. Let us assume that nobody in the government knew that those 800 men were killed, but instead they believed they just disappeared. Can you now imagine what a serious problem it should be for any governor that every year, 100 men would disappear without trace? How did Governor Obi react to the fact that 100 men disappeared in Anambra State each year he was in office? Or, he wasn’t aware either?
It is unfortunate that most of us cannot analyze a problem without huge emotional leakage. Otherwise, your conscience should tell you how impossible it is for any Governor of Anambra State not to know that Nwafor was carrying out extrajudicial executions. A normal Governor’s life is filled with people – staff, friends, business people, citizens, church people, etc. With such pile of humanity around the Governor, there will be gossips. There will be rumors. There will be stories. There will be complaints. There will be friends of staff seeking help with missing relatives. Something must be said in the Governor’s circles about Awkuzu SARS and James Nwafor to the hearing of the Governor. And if so, the focus should be on what the Governor did about it.
It is not a simple question of whether Peter Obi ever ordered Nwafor to kill people. No! Let’s think logically in the following format:
1. Did the Governor have the capacity or means or opportunity of knowing or suspecting that 100 men between ages 18 and 45 disappear without trace in his state each year for 8 years?
2. Did the Governor have the capacity or means or opportunity of knowing or suspecting that 100 men between ages 18 and 45 were killed by the police in his state each year for 8 years?
3. Did the Governor have the capacity or means or opportunity of knowing or suspecting that 100 men between ages 18 and 45 got arrested and tortured in his state each year for 8 years?
4. What investigation or effort did the Governor make to confirm his suspicion or rumors or information or complaints his government received on these things? If the Governor never bothered to investigate, then why not?
Now, I know how you feel. It is devastating to learn that a leader you trusted – your favorite governor, your pastor, your uncle, someone you love and respect had done something totally different from what you knew about him. But getting angry is not the way to deal with that.
Right from 2013, I carefully studied the case of the bodies found on Ezu river. Once we settled on the conclusion that those victims were killed by SARS, I intuitively knew that there was no way such large scale execution would occur without government involvement. And the government could not be the federal government. It was a locally generated executions. It was 35 men killed at a go. The killer must be enjoying the protection of the executive of the state Government. That conclusion never left my mind even as I reviewed the facts and circumstances many times over the years.
My advice to everyone interested in this is to leave an open mind and insist on a public trial of James Nwafor. That will be an opportunity for the world to hear from those involved. But you will be insulting my intelligence if you tell me never to mention Peter Obi because it is IMPOSSIBLE for him to do anything wrong. The real problem is that some people are afraid of hearing anything new so they won’t have to hear the truth that may be different from the ideas that are frozen in their minds.