Industrialist Urges Security Overhaul Over Herdsmen Killings

A seasoned industrialist and Managing Director of International Technical Company Limited, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Prof Fabian Ezegwan has urged the Federal Government to genuinely overhaul security agencies to make them live up to their challenges.
Speaking with The Tide last Monday in Port Harcourt in an interview on the state of security in Plateau State among other issues, Ezegwan stressed that the latest killing of innocent Nigerians in Plateau State by herdsmen was uncalled for and attributed it to lack of functional security apparatus in the country.
He explained that there was no way the security agents would stop the wanton killing in the country by herdsmen without overhauling the agencies to perform better.
Ezegwan said that it would be difficult to stop the rampaging herdsmen, unless the security agencies were equipped adequately to counter the bloody onslaught of the herdsmen.
According to him, on June 24, 2018, the herdsmen unleashed their mayhem yet again killing no fewer than 86 persons in Nasarawa State, the latest in a murderous campaign that has claimed hundreds of lives in many states especially Benue, Nasarawa, Enugu and Taraba States.
The industrialist and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka argued that although the primary responsibility of the security agents was to protect the lives of citizens, there was little the apparatus could do without having the necessary equipment to match the killer herdsmen.
He lamented the murderous attacks at Bazat, Ruku, Nyarr, Kura and Gana-Ropp villages in the Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of Plateau State.
As he puts it, “do the security agencies not know their duties anymore? Is their responsibility not to protect lives and property? Don’t they know how to fish out and arrest suspects anymore?”
He maintained that these are some of the questions that we need to ask. The security agencies should step up their primary obligations so as to attain their optimum efficiency.
Ezegwan, however, listed the external factors inhibiting the force from performing to includ poor funding, incompetence, lack of overhauling of apparatus and mismanagement of available funds.
Prof Ezegwam further condemned a statement credited to the Meyitti Allah sect that the killing of their cows triggered the latest massacre in Plateau State.
He, therefore, pleaded with the group to give peace a chance, saying that, “no amount of cows killed could equate with the human lives being sent to their early graves”.
Prof Fabian Ezegwam added that the Federal Government should ensure that the perpetrators of the Plateau menace were brought to book to serve as deterrent to subsequent upheavals.

Bethel Toby & Emmanual Wokoma