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Fact-Check 79 — The Geography of Fear
The Speech of Denial
In December 2024, Governor Hope Uzodinma, speaking at the end-of-year security briefing in Owerri, declared before national television: “Imo is now the safest state in Nigeria. Banditry is gone. Peace has returned to our streets.”
The claim came days after coordinated attacks on security formations in Orlu and Njaba, where at least seven officers were killed. But the statement was not designed to reflect reality; it was crafted to overwrite it.
In a state where silence has become the new form of order, fear itself has been rebranded as peace.
Enumerating Dread
Security is measurable — by data, not declarations. According to the Nigeria Security Tracker (Council on Foreign Relations, 2024) and the CLEEN Foundation’s Subnational Security Report (2025), Imo recorded 248 violent incidents between January 2024 and September 2025, resulting in 682 fatalities.
This figure is higher than those of Ebonyi (412 deaths), Anambra (377), and Abia (395) during the same period.
| Indicator | Imo | South-East Avg | National Rank (Violence) |
| Recorded Violent Incidents (2024–2025) | 248 | 168 | 7th |
| Civilian Deaths | 528 | 331 | 6th |
| Security Personnel Deaths | 154 | 99 | 5th |
| Abductions Reported | 121 | 73 | 8th |
(Prepared by Prof. MarkAnthony Nze | The Eastern Updates Investigative Series – Imo State)
These are not opposition numbers — they come from open-source security logs, police records, and human rights audits.
So, if this is safety, what would danger look like?
The Silent War
What the state calls “peace” is often the stillness of suppression. Across Imo, particularly in Orlu, Okigwe, and parts of Oru East, communities live under a hybrid occupation of state and non-state forces.
Residents whisper about curfews not declared in any gazette, and checkpoints where cash determines passage. In some villages, locals say “night belongs to the gun.”
Read also: Falsehood No. 78 — How Imo’s $5 Billion Vanished On Paper
A senior police officer, speaking anonymously, told The Eastern Updates:
“Our peace is statistical. We report fewer cases, not because there are fewer crimes, but because reporting them attracts punishment.”
Even the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC, 2024) noted that “security agencies in Imo underreport violence to sustain narratives of control.”
The Cost of Manufactured Peace
Behind every sanitized press release lies a casualty. Families of the missing gather without expectation. Traders reopen burnt shops not from confidence, but from necessity.
The Amnesty International Nigeria Annual Report (2025) documents “systemic abuses by security operatives in Imo, including arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances, particularly in the Orlu axis.”
No official has ever been prosecuted. No inquiry has ever been completed.
| Year | Reported Killings by State Actors | Disappearances Reported | Prosecutions |
| 2021 | 56 | 29 | 0 |
| 2022 | 94 | 37 | 0 |
| 2023 | 131 | 42 | 0 |
| 2024 | 178 | 56 | 0 |
| 2025 (Q1–Q3) | 111 | 31 | 0 |
(Prepared by Prof. MarkAnthony Nze | The Eastern Updates Investigative Series – Imo State)
Every zero in that final column represents not just bureaucratic failure — but moral collapse.
Security by Propaganda
In the Imo State Government’s Security Performance Report (2025), the word “peace” appears 37 times, while the term “justice” appears only once.
That ratio perfectly encapsulates the government’s logic: security is not the protection of rights, but the management of perception.
Television cameras focus on military parades, not mass graves. The state celebrates convoys of armored vehicles as symbols of peace — forgetting that peace is not the absence of gunfire but the presence of fairness.
As one community elder in Orsu told investigators:
“We no longer sleep; we just close our eyes.”
The Economics of Insecurity
Peace should make people richer. In Imo, it made them poorer.
The National Bureau of Statistics (2025) found that local market activity in affected LGAs fell by 39% since 2022, agricultural output dropped 27%, and school attendance declined 22%.
Investors do not come where fear is currency. That is why the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (2024) capital inflow summary shows Imo’s private sector investment at its lowest since 2017.
| Economic Sector | 2022 Output (₦B) | 2024 Output (₦B) | Change (%) |
| Agriculture | 238.5 | 174.1 | -27% |
| Trade | 411.2 | 355.4 | -13% |
| Transport | 182.3 | 139.7 | -23% |
| Manufacturing | 119.8 | 88.2 | -26% |
(Prepared by Prof. MarkAnthony Nze | The Eastern Updates Investigative Series – Imo State)
Imo’s peace has no economic pulse. The guns may be quiet, but the markets are dead.
Verdict — The Peace That Feeds on Silence
Governor Uzodinma’s declaration that Imo is the safest state in Nigeria is contradicted by every available dataset, field investigation, and eyewitness account.
What exists is not safety — it is suppression. The calm is coerced, the quiet is haunted.
In a state where truth has been detained and justice buried, peace has become a propaganda tool — the ultimate illusion of control.
Real security is not when people stop screaming; it is when they no longer need to.
And in Imo, the only thing safer than the government’s image is the impunity that protects it.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an internationally acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
👉 https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
Bibliographies
Amnesty International. (2025). Nigeria: Annual Human Rights Report 2025 – State-Level Analysis. London: Amnesty International Secretariat.
BudgIT Foundation. (2025). State of States Report 2025 – Governance, Security, and Economic Impact (Imo Chapter). Lagos: BudgIT Foundation.
CLEEN Foundation. (2025). Subnational Security Report 2025 – South-East Zone. Abuja: CLEEN Foundation.
Council on Foreign Relations. (2024). Nigeria Security Tracker Dataset (2024–2025 Edition). Washington, DC: CFR Africa Program.
National Bureau of Statistics. (2025). Imo State Economic Indicators Summary 2025 – Agriculture, Trade, and Labour. Abuja: NBS.
Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC). (2024). Accountability and Human Rights in Security Operations: The Imo Case. Lagos: RULAAC.
Transparency International Nigeria. (2024). Subnational Governance and Accountability Index 2024. Abuja: TI-Nigeria Secretariat.
World Bank. (2024). Nigeria Development Update – Conflict, Governance, and Economic Inclusion. Washington, DC: World Bank Nigeria Country Office.
