The air of hopeful uncertainty that beclouded the minds of relations and visitors to the patient who occupied Cot 5C of Jos University Teaching Hospital’s Emergency Ward on Tuesday morning, 4th of July was a replication of what confronts the minds of every Nigerian who finds himself or herself at the receiving end of the state of lawlessness and insecurity that have taken the Nigerian nation hostage for years and getting worse by every day that passes by.
Mr Ikwuta at Emergency ward in JUTH.
Mr.Agada Ikwuta is a volunteer of The Hunters Security/Vigilante group that helps to keep rampaging kidnapers and other law breakers away from Owukpa Community, Ogbadigbo Local Government Area of Benue State. He received brutal attacks from members of a youth group while he was trying to maintain law and order in the village of Ugbugbu Owukpa during a graduation party after the last day of WAEC examination for the year 2023 by graduants of Government Day Secondary School, Ugbugbu Owukpa. His attackers, according to findings by Wind Sound Africa’ publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Abah Matthew Abah-Enyi who accompanied other Ugbugbu leaders resident in Jos to visit the victim, were provoked by his efforts to maintain the peace amongst youth groups who come from the same ancestral backgrounds and are closely related. As at the time of the team’s visit, vigorous efforts by Doctors and Laboratory experts to perform various tests and scanning to determine the extent of damages Mr. Agada had suffered and the direction of treatment were still on. Our findings indicate that Owukpa Community’s Cultural leadership who had been brought abreast of the gory incident at a recent stakeholders representative meeting had delegated full internal investigative power to the affected community’s circular leaders to unearth the underlying courses of the incident, deal with it squarely and resort to them on how to prevent its re-occurrence.
Wife and son in prayerful consternation by the bedside.
The degree of injuries inflicted on Mr Agada, a family man whose wife and children’s future are hanging in the balance as they pray for the survival of their bread winner is a reminder of the state of impunity that has taken over rural and urban communities in Nigeria. Even as external attacks from bandits, herdsmen and kidnappers have been particularly rampant in Benue communities, the general state of lawlessness that have taken over the entire nation is disturbing source of sleepless nights across the nation. Ugbugbu community where the youth violence which fatal effect now swings over the head of Mr Agada like the Sword of Damocles almost openly plays host to illicit drug consumption den just as it exits in all nooks and crannies of the nation. According to Wind Sound Africa findings, a recent swooping down on a drug dealing suspect by agents of ostensibly reformed National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency was met by the equivalence of a brick wall as it achieved next to nothing. Research based statistics show that 74% of Nigerians between the age of 12 to 20 years are exposed to the poisonous allor of illicit drugs. 32.5% are hooked on it and as the last time Wind Sound Africa checked, only 3% of Nigerian parents can afford to pay for the type of drug rehabilitation homes that can actually recover a hooked mind from the brinks of permanent depravity. The rest of the ordinary run of “rehabilitation homes” run by government law enforcement agencies are actually burying grounds for the minds of those who are taken there for rehabilitation.
Meanwhile as Mr Ikwuta suffers in pains in JUTH, and wife, son and visitors watch in prayerful perplection, members of his community at home and on the diasporas are rallying to his rescue financially and in ensuring that the perpetrators of the crime do not get away without due punishment.
