When last May, the South-East Governors’ Forum rejected the template of the Inspector General of Police for Community Policing, the people of the region were hopeful that a regional security outfit was in the making.
This was especially after the Forum had reportedly mandated governments of the five states in the zone to commence the process to their various Houses of Assembly with a bill that would give legal backing to the initiative.
Recent events and the rampant altercations between traditional Rulers and some Local Council chairmen over who would nominate members of the security committee at the community level indicate that the governors of the South-East states have effectively settled for the federal Government’s Community Policing initiative.
This put paid to the expectations of many residents of the South-East who had at various fora canvassed for their own regional security apparatus.
The recent resignation of Prof. Uzodimma Nwala, the President of Alaigbo Development Foundation, from the South-East Security Committee raises more questions and more concerns for the people of the region, given Prof Nwala’s passion for the Igbo nation.
In Prof. Uzodimma Nwala’s resignation letter dated 25 August 2020, addressed to Gen. Obi Abel Umahi (Rtd) and obtained by our correspondent, the varsity don revealed that the South-East Security Committee was jointly established in February 2020, in a meeting involving the South-East Governors’ Forum, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and Alaigbo Development Foundation.
Our correspondent gathered further that the South-East Security Committee headed by Gen. Obi Abel Umahi had timeously concluded its work on a regional security architecture for the South-East, finalized details of the legal framework for the security apparatus and had submitted their recommendations to the South-East Governors’ Forum awaiting approval for implementation.
The committee did not hear from the Forum until the recent embrace of the Community Policing initiative of the Inspector General of Police.
By Nwala’s resignation, Alaigbo Development Foundation would have effectively pulled out of the South-East Security Committee for reasons he outlined in his resignation letter.
The letter read in part: “I write to resign formally as a member of the South-East Security Committee which was set up at a Joint Meeting of the Governors Forum, Ohanaeze Ndigbo and the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) since February 2020.
“I do this because the purpose for which this Security Committee was set up has been made null and void with the pronouncements of the Chairman of the South-East Governors Forum, Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, abolishing the idea of a Regional Security Architecture for the South-East.
“According to him, the Governors of the South East have jointly rejected the idea of a Regional Security Architecture for the entire South East and by extension, the entire Alaigbo.”
Nwala argued that the fact that the ‘so-called South East Security Committee’ was set up since early 2020 and after several months nothing had been achieved, means that it was not intended to serve any useful purpose.
He noted that Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) had compared the policy of Community Policing as equivalent to ‘handing over the security of chickens to the hawks’.
The letter further read: “It is to be recalled that in a Press Statement issued by the ADF on February 2020, we had stated unequivocally that the “policing plan of the Nigerian Police has been in operation in the South-East while the horrors in several parts of Alaigbo including Ebonyi State as depicted in the Report of Chief Igariwey at the last Ime-Obi meeting as well as that depicted in the Report by Mr. Aduba (CP Rtd.) at the joint meeting of Ime-Obi and the Governors Forum, all those horrors rather than abating have been rising to crescendo with our helpless people wondering if they have any Government or leaders who care for their plight”.
While noting that ADF is not in opposition to any workable security initiative of the Federal Government that will keep Igboland safe, Nwala stressed that “in opting out of the ‘now moribund’ South East Security Committee, ADF shall continue to work with the various pan-Igbo organizations to advance all possible and legitimate means of ensuring the Security of Alaigbo and her neighbors.”
.Source: New Telegraph
