The Silent Wounds of Okigwe: When Education, Health, and Faith Were Stolen”

*The Silent Wounds of Okigwe: When Education, Health, and Faith Were Stolen”

When Gentle the Yahoo arrived in Aku, Okigwe back in 2021, he presented himself as a fighter for Biafra. But what followed was not the struggle for freedom he preached — it was devastation. Behind the slogans were only crimes: kidnappings, violence, looting, and the slow collapse of entire communities.

Schools That Lost Their Voices

In towns like Umulolo, Agbobu, Umuowa-Ibu, and Aku, schools that once echoed with children’s laughter are now nothing but ruins:

Umulolo Central School

Umulolo Girls Secondary School

Umulolo Boys Secondary School

Community Primary School Aniche Obinetti Arondizuogu

Comprehensive Secondary School Aniche Obinetti Arondizuogu 

Agbobu Central School

Agbobu Community Secondary School

Umuowa-Ibu Technical School

Umuowa-Ibu Primary School

Every school in Aku community

Zinc roofs were stolen, windows smashed, iron doors ripped off. Classrooms sit abandoned, blackboards gather dust. Many children have dropped out completely, while others trek miles to find overcrowded classrooms in faraway towns. A whole generation is being stripped of education — and with it, their future.

Health Centres Turned to Ghost Houses

The health facilities that once served as lifelines for mothers, children, and the elderly are now empty shells:

Umulolo

Obinetti Arondizuogu

Agbobu

Aku

Umuowa-Ibu

Ihube

Ezinachi

For nearly four years, children here have missed out on immunization. Pregnant women are left without antenatal care. The sick have no safe place to turn. What should have been sanctuaries of healing now stand looted, vandalized, and abandoned.

This isn’t just about broken structures — it’s about broken lives. Mothers helplessly watching their babies grow without vaccines. Children trading classrooms for street corners. Communities stripped of health and dignity.

Churches Gone Silent

Even the churches, once the heartbeat of community life, have gone quiet. Sunday Mass is no longer celebrated in many areas because missionaries and priests are too afraid to come. For the faithful, this silence has cut even deeper than the physical losses — leaving them without spiritual guidance, comfort, and the communal strength that once bound them together.

If anyone still doubts these stories, they only need to walk through Umulolo, Agbobu, Aku, Umuowa-Ibu, Ihube, or Ezinachi. The truth is written there — on every shattered wall, every broken clinic, every locked church door, and every silent schoolyard.

Not Liberation, But Loss

What Gentle and his gang left behind wasn’t Biafra. It wasn’t freedom. It was fear, poverty, and backwardness.

Okigwe, once a proud land, is still carrying the scars — waiting for healing, waiting for its children to dream again.

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CC: FB Oriental Times