APC chieftain urges S’East governors to emulate S’West colleagues, establish security outfit

A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Livinus Okwara has commended the governors and people of South West zone for the launch a security outfit tagged, ‘Operation Amotekun’, saying that such a move showed the governors have the safety of their citizens at heart.

Okwara an industrialist also urged the governors of the South East region of the country to adopt similar measures to tackle numerous security challenges faced by the region.

Addressing journalists in Owerri, the Imo State capital, Chief Okwara noted that the use of village hunters and vigilante personnel adopted by the security outfit presented the best form of community policing.

The APC chieftain stated that the grassroots-oriented and bottom-up structure as well as an all-involving security framework, which Amotekun presents, is the ideal policing framework for modern policing to checkmate emerging criminality in rural and remote communities especially within the South East region that had faced numerous issues of herdsmen attack and kidnapping activities for some time.

 “The governors know their people more than any other person from outside the state. Therefore, establishing the security outfit will help them protect their people and property.

“To me, this security outfit has a positive reason to assist the police and the people can easily trust them more than the police because they live with them. They also know everyone in the community.

“So, as long as it helps policing, it’s a good development that should be adopted by our governors in the South East and other regions in the country. There shouldn’t be any controversy about it because their job is like that of traffic management authorities of various state governments which do marvelous job of assisting the police and Road Safety to manage traffic.”

Okwara, who congratulated Senator Hope Uzodinma on his victory at the Supreme Court, urged him to have a listening ear to the people and understand their plight as well as continue where Hon. Emeka Ihedioha stopped.

He said, “In order not to disappoint the people the way former governor, Rochas Okorocha did, Governor Uzodinma must be a good listener to the people. Our people want a governor they can trust and Emeka Ihedioha began that before our dear Governor Uzodinma took over from him.

“I’m glad that he said he would continue from where Ihedioha stopped. There is nothing wrong with that because the essence of governance is for the good of the people.

“He should equally encourage industrialisation in the state. Imo should not only be known with hotels. Okorocha promised industrialization, but it ended up being a scam. Some of us that have genuine interest to invest here from outside were discouraged by government actions. Senator Hope Uzodinma should not toe that line.”

While commending the governor for announcing his intentions to recover lands forcefully and illegally taken away from individuals with a view to returning same to the owners, Okwara advised Uzodinma that achieving that would etch his name in the minds of the people.