My dear learned colleague, Agbai Nnachi Agwu, Esq., I have read your response with the careful attention it demands, though not the respect it seeks. You have written not as a lawyer defending the rule of law, but as a propagandist defending the indefensible. Your letter is a masterclass in intellectual dishonesty, selective memory, and the dangerous art of using legal language to legitimize collective punishment.
You address me as brother and invoke familial ties to Amasiri through your ikwu. How convenient. You claim brotherhood while defending the administrative annihilation of your brother’s community. You speak of maternal lineages while supporting the tear-gassing of grandmothers. This is not brotherhood. This is betrayal dressed in appellations of kinship.
THE FUNDAMENTAL DISHONESTY OF YOUR ARGUMENT
You accuse me of “evasion and dishonesty” for discussing rights while being “silent on the heinous acts that necessitated the state’s intervention.” This is your first lie, and it is foundational to everything that follows.
I have never been silent about violence. My petition explicitly documents and condemns every act of violence, from whichever source it emanates. What I refuse to do, and what no lawyer with a functioning conscience should do, is accept that violence against one community justifies collective punishment of another without investigation, trial, or due process.
You ask why I am silent on “heinous acts.” I ask you: Where were you when Amasiri was bleeding for over twelve months? Where was your voice when seven men were kidnapped while preparing a school for children in January 2025? Where was your legal analysis when a retired Nigerian Army General and his wife were abducted and executed in July 2025? Where was your concern for the “right to life” when a road safety officer was beheaded? Where was your citation of Section 33 of the Constitution when armed groups blocked the Amasiri-Okigwe Federal Highway, abducted people based on their dialect, and burned their vehicles?
For over a year, Amasiri died in installments while the Ebonyi State Government watched. You were silent then. Your learned opinion was not required then. Your legal expertise was not deployed then. But now, when the government finally moves with collective punishment against an entire community, you emerge as a defender of state action.
This is not legal analysis. This is opportunistic advocacy for ethnic interests masquerading as constitutional discourse.
THE LANGUAGE OF RETALIATION, NOT REGULATION
You characterize the operations in Amasiri as lawful security measures. But let us examine what was actually announced on Saturday, 31 January 2026. The statements publicly attributed to Governor Nwifuru did not employ the measured language of law enforcement or security regulation. They were declarations of collective retaliation.
The Governor reportedly announced that the government would demonstrate its power, that no living being would remain in the community within a stated period, and that the impact of the operation would be remembered for decades.
Counsellor, read those words again. “No living being would remain in the community.” “The impact would be remembered for decades.” This is not the language of investigative policing. This is not the rhetoric of proportionate security response. This is the language of collective punishment, of making an example, of demonstrating that an entire population can be crushed by executive power.
Under Nigerian constitutional law, punishment cannot precede investigation, trial, and conviction. Yet the Governor’s own words reveal that what was announced was punishment, collective and comprehensive, against an entire civilian population. You defend this as a “security measure.” I call it what the Governor himself framed it to be: retaliation and demonstration of power.
THE PERVERSION OF LAW IN YOUR HANDS
You cite Dokubo-Asari v. FRN to argue that “where national or public security is threatened, individual rights may be secondary to the collective survival of the state.” Let me educate you on what that case actually stands for, since you appear to have read the headnote and skipped the judgment.
Dokubo-Asari dealt with the detention of a specific individual accused of specific crimes threatening national security. The Supreme Court balanced the right to liberty of one person against evidence of imminent danger to the nation. It did not, and would never, authorize the collective punishment of an entire community without charges, without trial, without even identifying specific perpetrators.
Your attempt to use Dokubo-Asari to justify the suspension of political office holders, dethronement of traditional rulers, closure of schools, forced redeployment of teachers, shutdown of economic activities, and military occupation of Amasiri is legal malpractice of the highest order.
You then cite AG Adamawa State & Ors. v AG Fed & Anor., invoking Section 45(1) of the Constitution on derogation of rights. Again, you either misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent the law. Section 45(1) allows for derogation of rights through laws “reasonably justifiable in a democratic society” for specific purposes including public safety. It does not authorize a Governor to issue executive decrees collectively punishing an entire community. The phrase “reasonably justifiable in a democratic society” is not decorative. It means proportionate, necessary, and subject to judicial review. What has been done to Amasiri fails every element of this test.
THE DOCTRINE OF COLLECTIVE GUILT: A RETURN TO BARBARISM
You write: “While criminal responsibility is personal, communal liability for the concealment of crime is a challenge to the rule of law.” Then you argue that “collective liability can be used as a deterrent to encourage community members to expose criminals.”
Counsellor, let me be clear: What you are defending is not a “security measure.” It is collective punishment, and it is expressly prohibited under international humanitarian law to which Nigeria is bound.
The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 33, states unequivocally: “No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.”
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which has been domesticated into Nigerian law through the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Ratification and Enforcement) Act, prohibits collective punishment.
You defend collective liability as a “deterrent.” I call it what it is: a return to pre-civilizational notions of justice where entire communities, including children, the elderly, and the infirm, are punished for crimes they did not commit, based on the theory that they must be “concealing” criminals.
Your argument contains a fatal legal flaw that reveals either ignorance or dishonesty. You demand that the civilian population of Amasiri “produce” suspects and evidence. But civilians have no power to investigate, arrest, detain, or produce suspects. That duty lies exclusively with law enforcement agencies under Nigerian criminal procedure. To demand that an entire population produce evidence or suspects under threat of collective sanctions is to invert the entire framework of criminal justice and to impose on civilians obligations that belong solely to the state.
By your logic, if a criminal lives in your neighbourhood, your entire street should be placed under curfew, your local government should be dissolved, and your children’s schools should be closed until someone produces the criminal. This is not law. This is hostage-taking by state power.
THE HUMANITARIAN CONTRADICTIONS YOU IGNORE
You describe the situation in Amasiri as “a necessary containment measure.” But the conditions on the ground reveal contradictions that expose the true nature of these operations.
Quarry operations in Amasiri reportedly continue and generate revenue for the state. Yet health facilities remain shut. Schools remain closed. Markets remain closed. Access to farms is restricted.
Let me be plain: Where economic extraction continues while access to food, education, and medical care is restricted, the operation ceases to resemble neutral security enforcement. It becomes economic exploitation under the guise of security.
Even in situations of armed conflict, which this is not, international humanitarian law requires that humanitarian access be preserved. The denial of medical care to civilians, the closure of schools to children, the restriction of access to food sources cannot be justified as investigative tools or security measures. They are instruments of collective punishment.
If the concern were truly security and investigation, why would quarries remain operational while health facilities are shuttered? The answer is obvious: revenue generation continues, but humanitarian access is denied as punishment. This is not law enforcement. This is the weaponization of state power to inflict maximum suffering on a civilian population.
THE BLOOD YOU IGNORE
You write with passion about “funerals, severed heads, arson, missing relatives and the terror of unpunished murder” in Edda. Your pain is real, and the crimes you describe are horrific. But your selective empathy reveals the hollowness of your argument.
Do the seven men kidnapped from Amasiri in January 2025 not deserve the same legal energy you now deploy? Does the retired General executed in July 2025 not merit your concern? Does the beheaded road safety officer not qualify for your legal advocacy? Or do lives only matter when they serve your ethnic and political calculations?
You demand that Amasiri produce “severed heads and missing persons.” I demand to know: Where was this forensic precision when Amasiri was producing corpses for twelve months? Where was the state’s “forensic and punitive pressure” then? Where were the investigative panels, the arrests, the prosecutions?
The truth is simple and damning: When Amasiri suffered, the state did nothing. When violence spread to Edda, the state punished Amasiri. This is not justice. This is selective prosecution based on political and ethnic considerations.
THE FICTION OF ARRESTS WITHOUT ARRAIGNMENTS
You assert in your response that perpetrators have been arrested and confessional statements obtained. This claim, if true, makes the continued collective punishment of Amasiri even more indefensible.
If suspects have been identified, arrested, and confessions obtained, then present them before a court of competent jurisdiction. Arraign them. Let the judicial process begin. Let evidence be tested. Let justice be administered through the courts as the Constitution requires.
Yet no individual has been publicly charged. No arraignment has taken place. No judicial finding of guilt exists. The continued imposition of sweeping restrictions on an entire community in the absence of any prosecution reinforces what is obvious to any observer: these measures are punitive, not investigative.
You cannot have it both ways, Counsellor. Either suspects have been identified and arrested, in which case they must be arraigned and the collective punishment must end, or they have not been identified, in which case the arrests and confessions you claim do not exist. The constitutional position is settled: criminal responsibility is personal, and punishment must follow conviction by a court of law. Continued collective sanctions in the absence of individual prosecutions are nothing more than hostage-taking by administrative decree.
THE FARCE OF YOUR LEGAL JUSTIFICATIONS
You defend the dissolution of the Amasiri Development Center by arguing that “if a development center becomes a theatre for planning or shielding insurrection, a harbinger of clandestine activities, doom and death, its legal basis is forfeited.”
This assertion contains two possibilities, both of which indict the position you defend. If your claim is unsupported by evidence, then you are engaging in unfounded defamation of a state institution and the community it serves. If your claim is correct, then it represents a catastrophic failure of state oversight over a government-created institution.
But more fundamentally, dissolution without legislative process does not substitute for criminal investigation or prosecution. Administrative action cannot replace judicial process. If the Development Center was used for criminal purposes, then investigate, gather evidence, identify perpetrators, and prosecute them. Do not dissolve the institution as collective punishment for alleged crimes that have never been investigated or adjudicated.
You write that “the removal/deletion followed due process of the law.” This is an outright falsehood. There was no hearing, no opportunity to respond, no judicial or quasi-judicial process. There was an executive order based on collective presumption of guilt. If this is your definition of “due process,” then you do not understand the concept.
THE GOVERNOR YOU PRAISE
Your letter concludes with effusive praise for “the listening, Solomonic, brave, ever-ready, peaceful and humane Governor of our dear Ebonyi State, HEX Francis Ogbonnia Nwifuru.”
Let me tell you what this “Solomonic” Governor has done. He ignored Amasiri for twelve months while they were abducted and killed. He then announced that “no living being would remain in the community” and that the impact would be “remembered for decades.” He punished Amasiri collectively without investigation. He deployed military force against unarmed civilians. He presided over the tear-gassing of elderly women engaged in peaceful protest. He closed schools, leaving children without education while keeping quarries operational to extract revenue. He shut down health facilities while maintaining economic operations. He suspended political representation, silencing an entire community.
If this is your Solomon, then you worship at the altar of tyranny. If this is your definition of “peaceful and humane,” then your moral compass has been shattered beyond repair.
THE PATH YOU HAVE CHOSEN
You write that “peace will return to Amasiri the moment the community chooses the path of full disclosure, remorse and the surrender of remaining suspects.” This reveals the totalitarian logic underlying your entire argument.
You place the burden of peace on the victims of collective punishment rather than on the state that has violated their constitutional rights. You demand “remorse” from an entire community, as if communities can have collective guilt requiring collective repentance. You insist on “full disclosure” and “surrender of remaining suspects” while the state has conducted no transparent investigation, identified no specific individuals through judicial process, and arraigned no one before any court.
You have inverted every principle of criminal justice. In your world, communities are guilty until proven innocent. Constitutional rights are suspended until the state is satisfied. Military occupation is justified until detainees confess. Administrative punishment precedes judicial determination. This is not the 1999 Constitution. This is the logic of authoritarianism.
A QUESTION OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Counsellor Agbai Nnachi Agwu, you are entitled to your ethnic loyalties. You are entitled to your political allegiances. You are entitled to advocate for the interests of Edda Community. But you are not entitled to dress your advocacy in the garments of constitutional law and human rights while defending actions that violate every principle these concepts represent.
The Legal Practitioners Act and the Rules of Professional Conduct require lawyers to uphold the rule of law, defend constitutional rights, and maintain professional integrity. When you use legal language to legitimize collective punishment, when you cite cases to justify actions they would never authorize, when you defend the closure of schools and health facilities while quarries remain operational, when you support the tear-gassing of grandmothers as “security measures,” you are not practicing law. You are prostituting it.
You have chosen to be an apologist for state overreach rather than a defender of constitutional governance. History will remember this choice, even if you prefer to forget it.
THE TRUTH YOU CANNOT ESCAPE
Despite your legal gymnastics and ethnic advocacy, certain truths remain incontrovertible:
Collective punishment is illegal under Nigerian and international law. No amount of legal citation can change this.
The Governor’s own words on 31 January 2026 framed the operation as retaliation and demonstration of power, not as measured security response. “No living being would remain” and “impact remembered for decades” are not the words of law enforcement but of collective punishment.
Due process was completely absent. No investigation, no hearing, no charges, no trial preceded the administrative annihilation of Amasiri.
The state’s response has been selective. Twelve months of violence against Amasiri produced no action. Violence against Edda produced immediate collective punishment of Amasiri.
Humanitarian contradictions expose the true nature of the operation. Quarries remain operational for revenue while health facilities, schools, and markets are closed. This is economic extraction under the guise of security.
Claims of arrests without any arraignments demonstrate that the measures are punitive, not investigative. If suspects exist, arraign them. The absence of prosecutions proves the collective nature of the punishment.
Military force was used against unarmed civilians. Grandmothers were tear-gassed. This is not “security containment.” It is state violence.
Children have been denied education, families have been denied livelihood and medical care, and an entire community has been denied constitutional rights. These are facts, not propaganda.
YOUR BROTHER’S KEEPER
You invoked brotherhood at the beginning of your letter. Let me return to that theme. The test of brotherhood is not in words but in actions. It is not in claiming familial ties while defending the persecution of your brother’s community. It is not in invoking maternal lineages while supporting the brutalization of the mothers of Amasiri.
True brotherhood would have demanded that you use your legal expertise to call for equal investigation of violence against both communities. True brotherhood would have required you to insist on due process before collective punishment. True brotherhood would have compelled you to condemn the Governor’s declaration that “no living being would remain” in Amasiri. True brotherhood would have demanded you question why health facilities are closed while quartiles operate. True brotherhood would have required you to insist that if arrests have been made, suspects must be arraigned immediately and collective punishment must end.
Instead, you chose selective empathy, ethnic advocacy disguised as legal analysis, and apologetics for authoritarianism. This is not brotherhood. This is the betrayal of every principle our profession stands for.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION REMAINS SETTLED
Let me restate what you seek to obscure with legal sophistry:
Criminal liability under Nigerian law is personal, not collective.
Punishment must follow conviction by a court of law, not administrative decree.
Executive action must be backed by law and subject to judicial review.
Any restriction of fundamental rights must be lawful, reasonable, and proportionate.
Civilians cannot be required to perform the investigative and prosecutorial functions that belong exclusively to the state.
Humanitarian access, including medical care, education, and food security, must be maintained
