By CHIEDU OKOYE

It was the revered Irish poet, W. B Yeats, who wrote the poem titled “The Second Coming”, from which I lifted this line: the falcon cannot hear the falconer. That line aptly encapsulates and captures the behavioural patterns of members of the Special Anti-Tout Squad of Anambra, the acronym of which is SASA. It is the security outfit whose members wield pestles and other dangerous weapons of torture. In Anambra State, members of SASA have gained notoriety for maiming people with their pestles while carrying out their duties. 

Before Professor Charles Chukwuma Soludo became the governor of Anambra State, the state was a familiar  stamping ground of touts and thugs, who would commit atrocious and heinous crimes under the guise of collecting road levies from commercial motorists. They were dreaded by motorists and other road users. And their nefarious activities gave Anambra State a bad name and scared investors away from the state. 

So upon taking over the reins of power as governor, Gov. Soludo formed the Special Anti-Tout Squad of Anambra, SASA, with the intention of ridding Anambra roads of touts, thugs, and miscreants whose activities endangered the lives of people. His decision to form SASA is not injudicious considering the fact that the misdeeds of the touts had made many investors flee Anambra State. And the road levies which they collected never entered the coffers of the state government then. It’s the hope of Gov. Soludo that SASA members would work within the ambit of the law and bring back sanity to our roads. 

But the obverse is what obtains in Anambra State today. The torrents of complaints, which have trailed the activities of SASA, are indicative of the fact that Squad is abusing and misusing the enormous power entrusted to it. It is a perfect exemplification of the case of the falcon not able to hear the falconer, anymore. 

On July 1, 2025, SASA operatives went haywire in Chief Emeka Anyaoku’s home town of Obosi. Under the pretext that they were chasing fleeing drug peddlers, they menacingly barged into the Obosi town hall. They upturned chairs in the town hall and smashed the glass windows of the building. Cars, which were parked on the premises of the town hall were not spared the anger of the invaders as they were damaged, too. And one of the operatives of SASA, in a moment of madness, drew his machete and dealt a cut on the hand of an infant, whose mother was cradling, nearly severing the infant’s hand from his body.

What the SASA operatives did in Obosi displeased and incensed Obosi people so much that they contemplated staging a protest to Government House in a bid to draw Gov. Soludo’s attention to the mayhem that happened in their town. Thankfully, the Obosi Development Union President General, Chimezie Obi, dissuaded them from embarking on the protest. Had they staged the protest, it would have turned violent. 

Expectedly, the Obosi people’s outcry against the SASA operatives’ act of oppression and incivility elicited response from the appropriate quarters. The representatives of the Anambra State government led by Professor Solu Chukwulobelu and Obosi people had a parley at Obosi town hall. And the Anambra State government has promised to conduct an investigation into the SASA operatives’ act of barbarity in Obosi and other places, with a view to overhauling that security outfit and punishing its operatives found guilty of engagement in misdeeds. 

But the despicable and reprehensible deeds, which are still being carried out by SASA operatives, have only succeeded in de-marketing Gov. Soludo even as the November 2025  Anambra State governorship election draws near. SASA has, unwittingly, provided Gov. Soludo’s political rivals the arsenal with which to shoot down his governorship re-election chances. SASA has become the falcon that cannot hear the falconer anymore. 

So it behoves Gov. Soludo to act wisely, decisively and swiftly to disabuse the people’s minds of the erroneous notion that SASA is his tool for waging political wars. But that is not the case. So it is high time SASA was reorganised and the bad eggs in it removed. Just as throwing the bath water away with the baby is not good, disbanding SASA will not bode well for us all given the activities of touts and thugs on our roads and their penchant for committing violent crimes. 

But the glittering leadership scorecard of Gov. Soludo should not be sullied and whittled away by the misdeeds of the few bad eggs in SASA. Rather, they should be called to order so that the falcon can start hearkening to the voice of the falconer. 

* Okoye, a poet, wrote from Uruowulu-Obosi, Anambra State