The presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, has expressed shock over reports that 80 bodies, including 20 headless ones, as well as countless skeletons, were discovered in Abia State.
Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, said corpses were discovered by security operatives during a raid of the forest around the Lokpanta Cattle Market in the Umunneochi axis of the Enugu-Port Harcourt Expressway.
In a statement on Thursday via his X account, formerly Twitter, Obi described the incident as “bone-chilling” and reflective of the worsening insecurity plaguing Nigeria.
“This level of barbarism and extremely cruel acts only reflects how insecure our environment has been. It unearths how insecurity has continued to ravage many parts of the country, taking innocent lives and killing the economy,” Obi lamented.
He praised Otti for “taking such a bold step against insecurity in the state. This is highly emulatable.”
Obi recalled facing a similar situation in 2013 as governor of Anambra State.
“I was accompanying President Goodluck Jonathan to an official engagement outside the country when I received the sad report of about 35 decomposing bodies floating on Ezu River, Anambra,” he recounted.
“I had to leave everything to rush back to the state to attend to the situation and ensure that order was restored in the vicinity. Investigation was immediately commenced, with autopsies conducted, before the Federal Government took over the process and asked the state government to hand off,” Obi added.
Obi reiterated that “security of lives and property remains the primary duty of any government and key to any meaningful development we hope to experience as a nation. We must therefore prioritise it.”
He encouraged governments at all levels to redouble efforts at combating Nigeria’s security crisis.