To Reckon and to Pardon

By David Okpokwasili 

Governments are judged by more than their laws. They are judged by how they apply them, and by whether the same hand that punishes can also forgive. Friday, September 18, 2026 gave Anambra State a rare case study in both. On one side of the day, the Anambra State High Court in Awka handed down a stiff custodial sentence to a native doctor whose viral wealth-charm advertising had made him a household name. On the other side, Governor Chukwuma Soludo walked into the Amawbia Correctional Centre and used the prerogative of mercy to release another practitioner of the same trade, weeks before his term would have ended anyway.

Read carelessly, these events look contradictory: one man is punished, another is pardoned. Read properly, they are two expressions of one philosophy. The state reckons with conduct that endangers society, and it pardons where correction has been achieved and the greater good is better served by restoration than by a few more days behind bars.

Governor Soludo had visited Amawbia and extended mercy to Chidozie Nwangwu, popularly known as Akwa Ọkụkọ Tiwara Akị, who had about three weeks left of his term. His path to that moment is worth recalling. He was arrested in February 2025 in connection with alleged fetish activities and charms reportedly prepared for young people seeking money. He was convicted in February 2026 on several counts under the Anambra State Homeland Security Law, and the sentence followed a plea bargain between the state government and Nwangwu. His guilty plea matters. He admitted charges linked to ritual practices and to preparing charms for criminals, and the shrine at Oba in Idemili South was subsequently demolished in line with the court’s order. The court, also, attached a rehabilitative condition to the punishment. The requirement that he serve as an ambassador for youth reorientation was already part of the court’s February judgment. The governor’s Special Adviser on Youth Reformation, Dr Nelson Omenugha, said the state’s objective was never punishment alone but correction, restoration and a new purpose.

The second event was the judgment against Ekene Igboekweze, known as “Eke Hit.” Justice Jude Obiora sentenced him to six years’ imprisonment on each of two counts, to run concurrently, without an option of fine, with the period already spent in detention counted toward the sentence. The court held that the prosecution proved beyond reasonable doubt the offences of advertising charms for wealth through “Oke Ite” and other rituals, and of preparing charms for criminals, while resolving the third count in the defendant’s favour. That last detail is important. This was not a blanket condemnation. The court weighed the evidence count by count and acquitted where the case fell short.

The defence was heard. Igboekweze said he was a registered herbalist and argued that the viral videos used against him were old recordings made before the Homeland Security Law took effect. He also pleaded for forgiveness, said he had learnt his lessons, and asked the court to consider his family, including newborn triplets he had not yet seen. The judge listened, weighed, and ruled.

To grasp why these events matter beyond the personalities involved, one must appreciate the social problem behind them. Anambra is a state of enterprise, and that enterprise has long been its pride. But over the years a corrosive counter-narrative took root among some young people: that wealth need not come from work, skill, trade or patience, that it could be summoned through ritual, and that anyone who doubted this was simply naive. This was more than a cultural embarrassment. When a society tells its youth that spiritual shortcuts are the fastest route to riches, it corrupts the link between effort and reward on which every honest economy depends. It also feeds real crime. Where wealth is believed to be purchasable through charms, the vulnerable become raw material: kidnappings, cult activity, and the moral collapse of communities who begin to admire money without asking where it came from.

The Anambra State Homeland Security Law, 2025 prohibits native doctors from claiming to make people wealthy through “Oke Ite” and other rituals, and it prohibits preparing charms for criminals. The arrests that followed the law’s signing in February 2025 included Igboekweze and two other prominent native doctors. The state chose to name the problem in statute and enforce it through the courts.

Every functioning state must be willing to say: this conduct is unacceptable, and here is the consequence. Consider what would have happened had the Eke Hit case ended without a verdict, or had the law been left as an unenforced statement of intent. Young people watching the videos, the displays of flamboyance, and the confident claims of miraculous wealth would have concluded that the government was posturing and that the trade was safe. Deterrence depends on credibility, and credibility depends on cases that actually end in judgments. Punishment is not merely retribution. It is a public declaration of which conduct a community refuses to normalise.

The manner of the reckoning also deserves credit. The trial ran through open court. The accused had counsel, and his lawyer, Chief Emmanuel Egbunonu, acknowledged that the court had been considerate in waiving the ₦40m fine attached to the two charges. The defendant argued his case and appealed for mercy. A state that punishes through due process strengthens the rule of law, and a state that punishes outside it weakens it. Anambra chose the former.

It should be said plainly that a conviction at the High Court remains subject to the ordinary right of appeal, and nothing said here should be read as closing that door. Reckoning through law includes respecting the law’s own review mechanisms.

On the other hand, pardon is not weakness, and it is not a contradiction of the punishment that preceded it. The prerogative of mercy is a constitutional power vested in the executive for precisely such moments. Governor Soludo exercised it as a remission that brought Nwangwu’s term to an end, with his sentence originally due to expire the following month. The state did not free a man who had escaped consequences. It released a man who had been convicted, had pleaded guilty, had lost his shrine, and had served the overwhelming majority of his sentence, including about 13 months already spent in custody before the court reduced his remaining term to 11 months.

Three considerations make the pardon defensible and, in my view, wise. First, it rewards the plea bargain and the confession of wrongdoing. A justice system that punishes the guilty plea as harshly as the contested trial teaches every future accused person to fight to the last. A system that recognises admission and cooperation gives offenders a reason to end their part of the harmful enterprise early. Nwangwu’s cooperation, including renouncing the practices and accepting a public role against them, has value to the state that additional weeks of incarceration would not add.

Second, it converts a former symbol into a corrective voice. The governor appointed Nwangwu Ambassador for Youth Reformation, citing his commitment to renouncing past practices and supporting positive change. Anyone who has worked on youth reorientation knows that the most persuasive messenger is often the one who has lived the lie. A young person will dismiss a lecture from an official. He may pause when a man who once claimed the power of wealth-making rituals says publicly that it is a trap. The court’s own order anticipated this, requiring him to renounce Oke-ite and related charm practices and make public statements against them.

Third, it demonstrates that the state’s objective is order, not vengeance. A government that only punishes teaches citizens to fear it. A government that can also forgive teaches them that reform is possible and that the door back into society is real. That message is arguably as important to public safety as any prison sentence, because it gives the wrongdoer who is still on the fence a reason to walk away.

One might ask why Anambra could not simply choose one path. The answer is that neither works alone. A state that only reckons, with no capacity for mercy, becomes brittle. It fills prisons without shrinking the problem, offers no route back for those willing to change, and eventually loses the moral authority that makes its punishments legitimate. A state that only pardons becomes toothless. The law loses meaning, and every ambitious youth calculates that the worst outcome of crime is a comfortable release.
The two functions are complementary halves of protecting the public. Reckoning says: this line is not to be crossed, and we will enforce it. Pardon says: if you cross it, submit to the process, and genuinely turn around, there is a way back. Together they make a justice system both firm and humane, and public trust needs both qualities.

The timing on a single day, one man sentenced and another pardoned, is a fortunate piece of symmetry. It shows citizens the full range of the state’s response. The message to anyone still tempted by the ritual economy is clear: the courts will act, and the sentences are real. The message to anyone who wants out is equally clear: cooperation, renunciation and genuine change carry weight.

Thie reinforces the state’s function as preserving the greater good of the society.
It means protecting young people from a false theory of success. Every youth who chooses apprenticeship, trade, study or farming over a ritual shortcut is a small victory for the greater good, and every one who gets pulled into the shortcut is a loss. It means protecting communities from the crimes that money-ritual belief systems feed, including kidnapping, violence and the exploitation of the desperate. It means restoring the dignity of Anambra’s real economic story, which is a story of industry, trade and enterprise, not of charms. And it means preserving the credibility of institutions.

However, applause alone is not enough. Concrete steps must taken and measured to ensure its success. The Youth Reformation ambassadorship must not become a ceremonial title. It needs a clear mandate, structured engagements with schools, churches, town unions and youth groups, and measurable outcomes. If it is to carry weight, the state must equip it, support it, and hold the ambassador to the commitments he made.

The Homeland Security Law must be enforced consistently. Selective enforcement, or the perception of it, would undermine the moral force of both the sentence and the pardon. The public should see that the standard applies to all, whatever a person’s fame, following or wealth.

September 18, 2026 will likely be remembered in Anambra as a day when the state spoke in two registers and meant the same thing by both. To reckon is to insist that actions have consequences. To pardon is to insist that people are more than their worst chapter. A government that can do both is not confused. It is doing what government exists to do, which is to protect the public, defend the common good, and keep open the possibility that a community can correct itself. Anambra has taken a considered step. The real measure will be what the next generation of its young people chooses to believe about how wealth is made.

David Okpokwasili, a journalist and public affairs analyst, writes from Awka