‘Igbos are kidnapping Igbos’: Soludo breaks silence on Anambra’s crime crisis

Chukwuma Soludo, Anambra state governor, has delivered a blunt reality check to Igbos at home and abroad, declaring that nearly all suspected criminals arrested in the state over the past three years are of Igbo origin, not the so-called ‘invading herders’ many have long blamed for insecurity in the South-East.

Speaking during a town hall meeting with Anambra indigenes in the diaspora at Metro Points Hotel in New Carrollton, Maryland, United States, Soludo said his administration’s security operations have exposed a hard truth: local youths are driving the wave of kidnappings and violence that has plagued the state.

“I have been in office for three years and three months. If we have arrested 100 criminals and kidnappers, 99.99% of them are Igbo youths,” the governor told the gathering.

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Soludo admitted he once believed the widespread narrative that Fulani herders were behind the attacks in parts of the region — a claim he now calls propaganda that has distracted communities from confronting the reality within.

“That was part of the lies pushed as propaganda, that the Fulanis were behind it all,” he said. “That lie led our youths into kidnapping because it became the next lucrative job after ‘Yahoo Yahoo’ and drug trafficking.”

The governor described how so-called ‘liberators’ operating from forest camps often present themselves as defending Igbo land from outside invaders, yet in reality, they extort and abduct their people.

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“Igbos are the ones kidnapping Igbos,” Soludo said, adding that security forces have dismantled numerous criminal camps run by locals. “Even those from other states now call it the ‘Anambra job’. They go to their villages, buy motorcycles, and come here to join the business. They get taken into the bush, trained in the act. But when they are eventually arrested, they claim it’s the Fulanis.”

He recalled his awakening, acknowledging how easy it was to fall for the story of herdsmen waiting to seize ancestral land. “I came with that same false narrative, that the Fulanis are invading our people, that they are just waiting for a whistle to be blown before they take over,” he said.

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But practical questions soon challenged that view: how do self-styled forest fighters survive for months without resources or community backing? “Nobody asked how those claiming to be liberators survive in the forest for one, two, or even six months. How do they feed?” he asked.

In a final remark, Soludo urged his audience not to twist his words but to confront them head-on: “I want you to quote me right — 99.99% of all the criminals we have arrested are Igbos. All these camps are Igbos.”