EDITORIAL: Halting the mutation of our hotels into graveyards

Horrific evidence that life has become too cheap in Nigeria was the discovery of a hotel with a massive graveyard in Anambra State a fortnight ago. The said facility, situated along the ever-busy Onitsha–Owerri Highway, had been a haven for kidnappers for only heaven knows how long. With 30 well partitioned graves, and shrine/charms atop the building to boot, the possibility that some victims of its ritual killings might have been unsuspecting lodgers cannot be ruled out.

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This hair-raising find, at Udoka Golden Point Hotel and Suites, at Oba town in Idemili Local Government Area, was by the state’s newly established security outfit, “Agunechemba” or the lion that guards the town. The savagery is the height of human rights violation. A sticking point in this chilling echo is that the hotel, primarily utilised for a homicidal regimen, has its kind in many states of the country. The detection reinforces the call in some quarters for the devolution of policing in dealing with the country’s security quagmire.

Without delay, this den of criminals was pulled down by the state government, drawing powers for this from the Anambra Homeland Security Law. It is a legal consolidation of the retributive justice against kidnappers, which the Peter Obi administration had initiated during his tenure as governor.

The barbaric episode presents a sense of déjà vu in the Otokoto Hotel incident in Owerri, Imo State in 1996, when an 11-year-old boy, Anthony Okoronkwo, a groundnut seller, was lured in and beheaded for a ritual purpose. It also evokes the ugly memory of the murder of Timothy Adegoke, a post-graduate student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Osun State, at Hilton Hotels and Resort in November 2021, where he had lodged for his two-day examinations.

It is curious that this Golgotha at Oba in Anambra existed unnoticed along a major highway strewn with maximum military and police presence through road blocks straddling almost every kilometre, whose preoccupation is the illegal collection of tolls from motorists. If the military and police personnel failed to discover this early, one is tempted to ask: what is the role of the State Security Service (SSS) operatives in the state? Security lapses or the incompetence of operatives revealed by this incident deserves a thorough inquest by the Chukwuma Soludo administration.

**Some of the graves discovered in the hotel**

Unfortunately, the state is often in the news for related impunities pertaining to the activities of non-state actors, which have resulted in many citizens, including security personnel, being routinely shot dead, or kidnapped and decapitated. Life is sacred and guaranteed by the 1999 Constitution, as amended. Specifically, the constitution states in Section 33 (1) that, “Every person has a right to life, and no one shall be deprived intentionally of his life, save in execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which he has been found guilty in Nigeria.”

As the Otokoto hotel saga and similar cases reveal, these heinous crimes occur either because of the negligence or connivance of security operatives. Arrests made at the Oba Udoka Golden Point Hotel should go beyond the sex workers. The owner of the hotel, who reportedly took to his heels, should be traced to his hideout and brought to justice, alongside his vile cohorts.

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When such crass desecrations of life and values degradation permeate the society, security agencies should not just throw up their hands in the air. The strong disapproval of citizens needs to also be registered, as was the case during the Otokoto ritual killing. Then, the hotel owner, Vincent Duru, the killer of master Okoronkwo – Innocent Duru, and three police personnel adjudged to be their accomplices, were all sentenced to death by the court.

Subsequently, it was not only the boy’s shallow grave that was discovered, but more than 20 others were uncovered through further investigation. The episode united Owerri residents in implacable rage, in a mass action that seemed to stress – never again! The government took a cue from this in handling the matter.

Forestalling such citizen action from the past should be a wake-up call to the negligent law enforcement agencies in Anambra State to redeem themselves. In Osun State, the Court of Appeal sitting in Akure, Ondo State, has just affirmed the death sentence passed by a lower court on Adedoyin, in respect of Adegoke’s ritual killing.

Communal rejection and offering actionable intelligence to security agencies to avert the barbarity of ritual killings is highly necessary. And, the scoundrels who participate in these morbid crimes should not be spared or allowed any sort of breathing space in the society. The Otokoto anomie was an offshoot of the nefarious 419 syndrome, which reached a peak in the 1990s, just as the cyber-criminality of this age has enabled a new class of nouveau riche, whose members use their ill-gotten wealth to perpetrate many other cold-blooded ventures.

In normal climes, when a society finds itself at the disjunction between its ethos and the freakish reality of existence, everybody takes up arms in defence of the public good. But in Nigeria’s context, the challenge is the determination of true standards of our morality. This was easier to ascertain in the past when moral guardrails existed.

As a people, we must begin to frown upon material acquisitiveness and the lavish life-styles of people without visible or legitimate means of livelihood, which are pointers to nefarious practices. Bringing this to closer scrutiny and warring against it, in our opinion, are critical steps toward our moral regeneration as people.

READ ALSO: Graves, shrine uncovered in kidnappers’ camp disguised as hotel

A hotel as a graveyard is an odious phenomenon. It is not surprising that in this age of information technology, the news has gone viral in the global space. This doesn’t augur well for the tourism/hospitality sector both within and outside Nigeria’s shores.

This eerie social climate calls for more oversight of hotels sprawling across all our cities and peri-urban areas. At the same time, hotel lodgers should be more careful and take measures to ensure their safety, while not hesitating to report their suspicions to the relevant security agencies.