By Charles Ogbu
YESTERDAY, 11 July, Mr. Okechukwu Akaneme, the former President of Onitsha Chamber of Commerce, former Chairman of Nigerian Union of Journalists, Onitsha Federated Chapel, prominent leader in the Onitsha business community and a major employer of labour, finally succumbed to the injury he sustained when agents sent by the Anambra State Waste Management Agency broke his spinal cord on October 2024 over a spurious allegation of owing waste nanagement debt.
For those who didn’t follow the story then:
Mr Akaneme was in his house in Onitsha in the early morning of Friday, October 11, 2024, still on his night wear, when a team of the Anambra State Waste Management Authority, ASWAMA, Awka, led by one Joseph Okoye and accompanied by two armed Nigeria Police Force operatives came to his house and mercilessly brutalised him, leaving him with a broken spinal cord following argument over unpaid ASWAMA levy. The most inhuman part of this is that after one of the policemen wove his hands through Mr Akaneme’s armpit and locked it behind his neck leading to his bone cracking, instead of taking him to the hospital immediately, they all ran away leaving the sexagenarian lying half dead on the floor.
It was the neighbours and Mr. Akaneme’s employees that took him to Holy Rosary Specialist Hospital and Maternity, Waterside, Onitsha from where he was referred to the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, NAUTH, Nnewi where he was driven to in the hospital’s ambulance on life support.
It was at NAUTH that an MRI examination conducted on him showed that his spinal cord has been damaged about 65%. He was later referred to the UNTH for more expert care before he was later taken to Memfys Neurosurgery Hospital, Enugu
But the real tragedy of this whole case is that the government of Anambra State on whose behalf this atrocious act was carried out spent a whole one month peddling the wicked lie that Mr. Akaneme didn’t sustain any serious injury but was merely pretending to be injured. The head of ASWAMA who sent his boys on that assignment, one Mike Ifeanyi Ozoemena believed Mr. Akaname was feigning being injured. Even the Commissioner for Environment, Felix Odimegwu whose Ministry oversees ASWAMA and as such, shares vicarious liability over this dastardly act, flatly told me in a WhatsApp chat that I was lying about Mr. Akaname’s state of health. I had to send him the picture of Mr. Akaname lying unconscious in his hospital bed at Memfys Neurosurgery Hospital, Enugu for him to believe the story with a promise that he would investigate and brief Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo.
It took a whole month and one week amidst social media callouts for the State Government to merely suspend (not punish) the Waste Management agents who maimed Mr. Akaname. Two Commissioners from the State would later visit Mr. Akaname at Memfys after which the State government agreed to pay his hospital bills but sadly, the government intervention came a whole two months after the incident when the doctor already ruled that Mr. Akaneme’s autonomic nervous system, responsible for stable blood pressure, steady heart or breathing rate, effective metabolism or digestion duties etc has been severly damaged by the injury he sustained at the hands of his attackers.
Why does it have to take social media outrage for a government to acknowledge a matter involving human life which needed a sense of urgency?
I had to go get the picture of Mr. Akaname lying unconscious on the hospital bed and forward to the Commissioner for Environment before they even started paying attention. A whole two months were wasted in unnecessary back and forth by a government whose primary duty is protection of lives; two months the government could have used to fly Mr. Akaname abroad for urgent treatment and he would probably still be alive now.
And this was how a man’s life was cut short by the action and inaction of his own government that swore to protect him.
His wife, Professor Florence Akaneme, a lecturer at University of Nigeria. Nsukka, is now a widow. His kids are now fatherless.
Even more painful is the fact that NONE OF THOSE WHO KILLED MR AKANEME HAS BEEN PUNISHED. Not the Mr Joseph Okoye who led the ASWAMA thugs, not the two police operatives who broke Okey’s neck and whom the Anambra Police Command has since confirmed they acted outside their line of duty, and certainly not any official of the State Ministry of Environment
The least we owe Mr. Akaname, a man who contributed immensely to the development of the society, is to demand for justice.
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