A lawmaker and member representing Oyigbo/Tai/Eleme Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Chisom Dike, has said that he has a solution to recurring security challenges in Oyigbo Local Government Area, assuring that he would bring permanent peace to communities bedeviled by incessant communal clashes in the area.
Dike, who made the remarks while speaking with journalists last Monday in an interview at Okoloma-Afam on his development road map for the people, promised to use everything within his power to ensure the local government area enjoys absolute and sustainable peace.
He said he was familiar with causes of communal crises, armed robbery and other cult related activities in the local government area and assured that he would deal with them decisively.
Dike enumerated some of the causes of the recent crises and armed robbery attacks to include “absence of elected and capable leaders who can revamp the dearth state of the local government area, the deliberate failure to maintain previous closed links between the local government, the traditional institutions and the people, and the inexcusable degradation in the relationship between the local government and the law enforcement and security agencies”.
He maintained that all the factors had given room for old grievances over farm lands, chieftaincies and plantain royalties across the local government area to resurrect and given new life.
According to him, we are aware of the crises and the atrocities bedeviling the area for sometimes now and believe that such challenges will be a thing of the past now that the mandate had been entrusted to me for good representation at the Federal House of Representatives.
“We can only hope that by my emergence as representative, I will give a listening ear to the hydra-headed security challenges facing the constituency currently. We cannot be leaders and these atrocities are allowed to continue unabated”, he said.
The Oyigbo political gladiator described as “unfortunate”, a situation where an innocent person would be forced to surrender his or her property to criminal-minded elements at gun point, which had become endemic to a relatively small area of Oyigbo Local Government Area.
He stressed that this was clear proof that the APC- led federal government had abandoned its most basic duties to preserve the lives and property of its citizens, noting that Oyigbo Local Government Area is dear to him and critical to the Nigerian project and therefore cannot be left behind when discussions on Nigeria’s development is being championed.

Bethel Toby