Ohaneze Ndigbo demands ‘Ogbunigwe’ security outfit for S’East
The President-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Nnia Nwodo, has demanded for the establishment of ‘Ogbunigwe’ Security outfit for the South East region.
Nwodo made the demand on Wednesday at the Southeast Security Summit, organised by the Nigeria Police in Enugu themed: ‘Strategic Partnership for Effective Community policing in the South East Zone’ which had Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Mohammed Adamu Abubakar, in attendance.
The Governors had earlier met with Mr. Abubakar in a closed-door meeting at the Enugu Government House.
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Nwodo at the event said any community policing that was not under the command and control of elected leaders was dead on arrival.
“Inside our mind, what our people want is to own our security architecture. The law should find a way of allowing us to have our own ‘Ogbunigwe’. So far, the system has failed,” the Ohanaeze President said.
Also, at the summit, the Archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province, Emmanuel Chukwuma, urged the Federal Government to declare Fulani herdsmen a terrorist group.
The cleric insisted that the rate of killings carried out by the herdsmen on religious leaders, which have often gone unpunished, has become devastating.
He warned that if nothing was done to deal with the challenge, the church will be left with no other option than to resort to self help.
“As a church, we have measures, both physical and spiritual that we can adopt to protect ourselves from this spate of killings. But we do not want to take laws into our hands,” he said.
The clergyman noted that the activities of herdsmen, including kidnapping and destruction of crops on farmlands has had adverse effect on the country’s economy over the years.
“Our women cannot go to their farmlands anymore for fear of being killed by herdsmen who allow their cows to destroy farms and the government is not doing anything about it,” he said.
He maintained that the Federal Government has not won the war against Boko Haram, as it has claimed, adding that it must make efforts to secure lives and property of citizens in the country.
“Our people are beginning to lose confidence on the government’s ability to protect their lives. We do hope that the idea of community policing, initiated by the Inspector General of Police will go a long way in dealing with the change of insecurity,” he noted.
All the governors from the zone attended the summit excerpt Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State who was represented by his deputy, Prof. Placid Njoku.
