Lawrence Nomayangbon Anini was the man who terrorized the entire society and made the Nigerian military president become furious that he summoned his highest-ranking police chiefs. The intent was to sort out a means to fight down the menace which was later tagged “The Face Of Terror: Lawrence Anini, Nigeria’s most notorious armed robber on the hospital bed after he was badly injured following his capture in December, 1986”. (Excerpts; National Mirror)
Some hundreds of kilometers away from the cosy and secured chambers of IBB’s Armed Forces Revolutionary Council where the high-powered meeting was going on, in the ancient city of Benin, everyone was bathed in fear and it was very palpable Bendel State lived under the dark blanket of sheer terror spread by this young man who communicated in Pidgin English and his local dialect.
Every strategy was applied to capture this elusive figure but nothing worked and he continued to unleash unspeakable mayhem upon the hapless citizens. The Oba of Benin, Erediauwa Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo was not left out of this ugly situation. He was visibly disturbed as his people were mercilessly slaughtered, killed, raped, robbed and maimed by a young desperado that everyone, including the government was cautious of.
Being a monarch who was highly-revered and concerned, he would never want to fold his arms and watch his people to be enslaved. He made a move further by calling a meeting with his council of traditional chiefs and they evaluated the matter in another dimension. They presented the case to the gods, and the oracle talked. A royal edict was issued and a proclamation was made to all Bini inhabitants. They were to make sacrifice of an egg each at the foot of the Emotan statue which is at the centre of the city.
The citizens of Bini Kingdom faithfully and willingly did as they were instructed and in a short while, countless fresh eggs were gathered at the feet of Emotan statue, to the chagrin of doubting poultry farmers. Benin Kingdom is one of the most legendary in Africa and not even in its thousands of years of existence was it so menacingly disturbed by a single bandit.
However, the nutritious sacrifice of the weeping kingdom never was considered a waste as the days of Lawrence Nomayangbon Anini became numbered without him taken that into cognizance, and was to be paid in his own coin.
Someone who never understood the rave of the moment could query who was Anini the Law and why was he feared to the extent that the then-military president fondly called IBB had to personally demand for his capture during a meeting of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), which was the nation’s highest decision making body in October 1986? IBB faced his Inspector-General of Police, Etim Inyang and the Commander-in-Chief blurted out ‘my friend, where is Anini?’
The nation would later get the answer in the most dramatic fashion. Dear Reader, you are welcome to the underworld; the world of the legendary and almost mythical Anini a.k.a The Law, The Governor, The Robber’s Robber, the man who would later etch his name in ugly and scrawny black ink in history as Nigeria’s most notorious armed robber. But how come this man rose?
The myth of Anini came to a fiery end on the 27th of March, 1986. It was a Saturday and thousands of citizens of the then-Bendel State joyfully trooped out to watch the unceremonious exit of Anini the Law from this earthly plane. Whether he would continue his armed robbery in the Great Beyond was no one’s business, they just wanted to see him dispatched from this planet as quickly and with maximum vengeance.
THE FACE OF TERROR: LAWRENCE ANINI
(as captioned) December, 1986. PICTURE CREDITS: NATIONAL MIRROR.
INTRODUCTION
On the 23rd of August 1986, something bizarre happened in
Bendel State, Nigeria. A prince of the Benin royal family,
Kingsley Eweka, was bundled to the Asoro firing range. A Bini prince and an aristocrat by birth; and by virtue of belonging to one of Africa’s oldest and most revered monarchies, Kingsley was however not accorded any honour that fateful day. As a matter of fact, he had just been condemned and sentenced to death by a court of law for armed robbery and he was manacled like a petty criminal that he was.
At a time when the law was not vast with modernity, the prince was lined up and in a couple of minutes; he was fired and joined his ancestors.
Controversially, something very interesting took place shortly before Kingsley Eweka was killed. He took a good look at his executioners, struggling to turn his neck as his body was firmly tied to the stake. They also glared back at him as a condemned criminal, casting furtive and somewhat puzzled glances at themselves. Then they asked him if he had anything to say. An embittered Eweka was overtaken with rage and he thundered ‘My friend and his boys will avenge my death!’ Being of less importance the executioners, who did not know those Eweka was ranting about, thought it was just the paranoid prattle of a man facing a sure death. They rated Prince Eweka’s statement to be a mere delusion and for that were not even interested in any friend of his, if indeed he had any. Their focus was to escort him to the border between the living and the dead.
The executioners let out warm smiles that slipped out of their vengeful cheeks and in couple of minutes; Kingsley Eweka became history. He was to explain himself before the gods as he transited but somehow, the prince was not blabbing.
(To be continued)
READ PART 2 HERE
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