Nearly six months after Eme Emmanuel Chinaza disappeared into the tin air, nothing has been heard about his whereabouts, even as his family have expressed fear that he may have been killed, or locked up in one cell until he is dead.
The young man who is dark in complexion had left their abode at 24 Amaekpu Road Osisioma near the commercial nerve centre of Aba in Abia State Nigeria has told his friend that he would be attending a meeting of IPOB at Orlu in Imo State, at a time the security around the town was nothing to write home about because of those who hide under the group, agitating for the creation of a new nation from Nigeria to be named Biafra.
According to Chukwu Ebube, his friend who got worried when he didn’t hear from him again in the coming two days, even as the parents Mr and Mrs Ikechi Eme, had worried him to try and reach his friend and whose cellphone lines stopped going through.
Around 2am of the fourth day of his disappearance, Eme called me and was whispering. He said that they may kill them any moment from then and that their bus ran into a battle crossline between the security agencies and a group suspected to be IPOB members.
The bus stopped and according to him, every person in the bus made their several ways to escape, but he was caught with about eight others in the forest the following day and were apprehended and maltreated.
According to him, they shot the prisoners at the slightest opportunity and are kept under very deplorable condition until one day, while they went for raid, five of them overpowered the only security agent who they were under his custody.
According to him he is hiding in a cave and that his phone battery may soon go down even as he said that security agents are hovering the airspace with helicopters in search of suspected fleeing members of the group.
Incidentally, that was the last call he made and from.then till now, beRly six months after, nobody has heard from him, Chukwu Ebube had told journalists in an interview.
Recall that in the onslaught against the assumed excesses of the Indigenous People of Biafra in Nigeria as well as the operations linked to Eastern Security Network, the security agencies have dreaded any person identified as member, anywhere in the land, even though they appear elusive.
Contacted, his father, Mr. Ikechi Eme said they saw their son last in August last year and never heard from nor set eyes on him since that time, that they are nearly losing hope of ever finding him, even as he said that two weeks after his son disappeared that they have travelled to Imo State in search of anyone who has information about the occupants of one of the buses that ran into the crossfire of that August and where a couple of young men were mowed down, according to sources.
He used the opportunity to cry to the general public to help him find his son who he described as very quiet and don’t go looking for trouble even as he had argued that even if his son had been a member of any group agitating for self rule that he did it out of youthful exuberance and innocently, too.
Meanwhile, as a couple of states in the South East Nigeria continue witnessing bloodletting on a daily basis, the return of Eme Emmanuel Chinaza may take a longer time and his parent may have to wait longer before they will see him as security has tightened around most states in the bid by the security agencies to nip the excesses of the unknown gunmen to the bud.
