If the murder of eight-year-old Chikamso Victory Nmezuwuba is callous and dastardly, the escape of the prime suspect, Maxwell Dike from Rivers State Police Command custody in cloudy circumstances, is bound to offend public sensibilities.
A 23-year old 200 level undergraduate of the University of Port Harcourt, Maxwell Dike who was arrested after he allegedly brutally murdered the little girl for ritual purposes escaped in the custody of the Rivers Police Command in very questionable situation. Dike who lived on the same street with Victory, was arrested by the local vigilante as he allegedly moved very suspiciously to dispose her remains at around 1am.
On questioning, the suspect allegedly dropped the bag he was carrying and took to his heels. He was subsequently pursued and arrested. And when the bag was examined, the vigilante group was shocked that it contained the mutilated body of the little girl who was reported missing the previous day. He was then handed over to the police where he allegedly confessed to the act and took them to where he kept parts of his victim severed in very dehumanizing circumstances after defiling the innocent little girl.
Curiously, the same police came out a day after with the devastating story of the escape of the suspect in circumstances that are bound to arouse serious suspicion of collusion. According to them, when the suspect was taken to the state CID, the investigating police officer took out the handcuffs for him to write his statement. But as he was being led to the cell, the suspect suddenly bolted into the thin air and all efforts to apprehend him proved abortive.
The father of his victim, Dr. Ernest Nmezuwuba who was witness to the ugly and confounding development was so devastated that he has cried foul. He decried the circumstances of the purported escape of the suspect even when policemen at the gate were fully armed. The officer at the centre of the mess was said to have been arrested and thrown into the cell by his bosses who are equally distressed by the scandal.
The state Commissioner of Police, Zaki Ahmed while confirming the sad episode denied suspicion of collusion and attributed it to individual negligence. For him, “it is too bad it happened, but it is one of those things. Sometimes things can happen this way”. He promised to put all within their powers to re-arrest the suspect.
Ahmed took a very simplistic view of the matter even when full investigation is yet to be conducted. Sadly, that inquiry cannot make any meaning until the escapee is re-arrested. And when this is paired against the alleged request of the said officer that Nmezuwuba should buy water for the suspect when he complained of thirst, it would appear there is more to it than ordinarily meets eyes
How come an officer in custody of such a dangerous suspect could ask a father grieving over the dastardly and incorrigible manner in which his daughter was butchered, to buy drinking water for the same animal who murdered his daughter? And when has it become a practice for those in police custody to be provided food by the same people who want them to face the raw teeth of the law? Or did it not occur to the officer that the suspects could get instant punishment if those they offended are allowed to get them something to eat or drink?
The purport of these posers is that it was too early in the day for Ahmed to have attributed the inexcusable escape to individual error. Even when full investigation leads to that conclusion, a case of gross incompetence and dereliction of duty would have been established against that officer. How come a dangerous suspect arrested through the dexterity of the local vigilante successfully escaped within the walled premises of the CID manned by armed policemen. That such a thing could happen within that premises portrays the vulnerability of that department.
So what is this noise about touted escapades and reinvigoration of the police force when those kept in their custody can escape with relative ease? Before now, we are usually treated to stories of sundry police encounter with criminals: how they gunned down many in combat while those that managed to run away, escaped with bullet wounds. The case in point would have been excusable if the police had told us that the ritual killer escaped with bullet wounds or even paid the supreme price while fleeing police custody. But in this situation, the police was helpless. What a monumental embarrassment and gross display of incompetence in the discharge of their duties. By that negligence as we are being made to believe by the commissioner of police, his men have added to the sorrows of the victims’ father who coincidentally comes from the same village with the escaped suspect.
Ahmed must do all within his powers to re-arrest the fleeing criminal. That is the only way to douse mounting suspicion that there is more to the escape than ordinarily meets the eyes. The killer suspect even confessed when confronted by the victims’ father that he is not alone in the murderous enterprise. Without arresting him, we would have lost the necessary lead into the ring that sustains this devious murderous activity.
It has become vital to get at those behind the recurring incidence of cultism and ritual killings which are two sides of the coin in the bizarre butchering of innocent souls by the young members of our society. For hardly does any day pass by without stories of ritual murders and cultic killings in different parts of this country. The practice is so pervasive among the youths that something urgent must be done before we relapse into the Hobbesian state of nature characterized by atavism and the law of the jungle.
Curiously, our leaders have failed to respond to the potent danger which ritual killings and its twin brother cultism pose to the survival of the society. Our response to the degenerate level into which these crude practices have sunk, has been limited to apprehending culprits where possible. We have curiously serially defaulted in developing the necessary framework to dig deep into the factors that sustain these inhuman practices and belief systems.
Nobody has cared to investigate what sustains the idea that ritual killings involving the extraction of vital body organs can lead to success either in the acquisition of wealth or awesome supernatural powers.
Since research into the motivation for ritual killings has shown that the practice is thought to lead to transformation, self-deification and healing while satanic human sacrifice is done as a way of drawing down dark forces, our governments should have by now, commenced investigations into the veracity or otherwise of these claims. Working with herbalists and sundry traditional African religion practitioners, findings and conclusions reached could be of immense help in disabusing the minds of young ones against increasing resort to these mundane practices.
We are also confronted by vampirism- a belief that drinking blood and practicing cannibalism can help individuals to achieve power and immortality. These are at the heart of the festering incidence of ritual killings and cultism. But we do know that no human is immortal. Even where power is achieved through such practices, they are still of very temporal and limited value given the mortality of the human.
It is a mark of backwardness and underdevelopment that as other nations excel in science and technology; our people are preoccupied with such mundane issues as occult powers for wealth and supernatural acquisition- practices that take us nowhere except inflicting harm on the rest of the society. The government must do something serious to tackle the menace of cultism and ritual murder before they become another security challenge comparable in terms with such weird religious ideologies that propped up the Boko Haram insurgency.
But the Rivers State Police Command must do all within its powers to re-arrest the fleeing suspect. That is the only way to reassure the distraught father of the slain girl that the police did not collude with the criminal to escape. Even then, those at the centre of the huge mess must not go scot free.
