ESN: Biafran Army Or Vigilante Group? By Ozodinukwe Okenwa
Days before the dawn of Yuletide last year the fugitive leader of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had launched the Eastern Security Network (ESN) to protect the people of south-east and south-south regions from terrorists, bandits and armed Fulani herdsmen allegedly trooping in from the north and even elsewhere outside our borders. The formation of the security outfit was announced by a video online showing thousands of young men and women decked in paramilitary uniform inside a jungle.
Kanu called it a vigilante group out to protect Biafrans from marauding Fulani herdsmen attacks and kidnappings and banditry but the federal goverment viewed it differently describing ESN as a “Biafran Army” formed by the leader of a ‘terrorist’ separatist organization.
Days after the formation of the ESN the panicked federal security forces reportedly began combing the entire south-east forests by air to be able to locate where the Kanu ‘army’ were lodged with an ‘order from above’ for them to be dislodged or neutralized.
Reports online had it that the Nigerian Army under the recently-retired Gen. Tukur Buratai (now Ambassador-designate!) had deployed combat helicopters, gun trucks and soldiers to search some forests in the south-east states. The frantic search was fruitless as no one was arrested nor any camp inside the jungle located.
Last December Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), had advised President Muhammadu Buhari and the Inspector-General of Police, Muhammed Adamu, to allow ordinary Nigerians to bear firearms to protect themselves. He had reportedly argued that the unprovoked attacks especially on villages by bandits would drastically reduce in the country if the communities were allowed to arm themselves with weapons to defend themselves. He spoke the minds of millions of oppressed Nigerians.
When ‘Amotekun’, the south-western regional security organization was launched last year it sparked national controversy. Like ‘Amotekun’ ESN had generated some controversy even in Igboland due to Nnamdi Kanu’s Biafran nationhood agitation. And his ferocious battle against the country he labelled a “zoo”.
Unlike ‘Amotekun’, however, ESN was not backed with any state legislative instrument thereby giving it a legal backing. Kanu must have seen the dire need to save a people terrorised or subjugated and he exploited the vaccum left by the foot-dragging attitude of the Governors of the region.
Now that the Governors have seen the extent to which Kanu is prepared to go in defense of the people noises are being made from Abakaliki to Owerri over the imminent emergence of Amotekun-like force for the south-east geopolitical zone. According to Gov. Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State they are in the decisive conclusive process of forming a regional security outfit.
