Task Before Ebube Agu

As if jolted by the audacious and dare-devil armed attack on the headquarters of the Police Command
and the Owerri Custodial Centre in the Imo State capital in which about 50 vehicles were burnt and 1,844 inmates set free, the South-East Governors of Dave Umahi (Ebonyi), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Hope Uzodinma (Imo), Willie Obiano (Anambra) and Emmanuel Ugwuanyi (Enugu) convoked a security summit in Owerri on April 11, 2021. At the end of the meeting, Dave Umahi, chairman of the South-East Governors’ Forum, announced the birth of a regional security outfit code named Ebube Agu with a mandate to coordinate security activities in synergy with extant security agencies to ensure adequate protection of lives and property of the people of the region.
According to Umahi, the five South-East States condemned in the strongest terms activities of terrorists and bandits within the region and resolved to put up a stiff counter force against criminal elements with a view to ridding the region of all forms of banditry and terrorism. He said “the political leadership in the South-East has resolved to bring together all the arsenals at the command, as a united zone, to fight and flush out criminals and terrorists from the zone”.
Fast forward to Sunday, April 25, 2021, the governors, excepting those of Imo and Anambra who were represented by their deputies, with notable figures like the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Alfred Achebe; Archbishop of Enugu Ecclesiastical Province, Anglican Communion, Rev. Emmanuel Chukwuma; former Governor of old Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo; elder statesman, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, among others, converged in Enugu, capital of Enugu State, and designated headquarters of Ebube Agu, to further the cause of the newly formed security organisation in the wake of diverse reactions, some very caustics, that had greeted their earlier proclamation. At the end of this meeting, the governors disclosed that a legal framework for Ebube Agu had been set in motion while an Advisory Board for the outfit had also been set up with its structure and operational modalities agreed upon.
“The Attorneys General and Commissioners of Justice of the South-East states have been directed to work with the Joint Security Committee to come up with the amendment of the existing state laws to reflect the new Ebube Agu outfit,” they said, adding that the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Prof. George Obiozor, had been directed to within 10 days set up a Peace and Reconciliation Committee and a Strategy and Welfare Committee to “engage our people for the peace and security of our people, especially those who are being unfairly treated.” They declared that “the meeting is in support of restructuring, the setting up of State Police and other national issues as discussed in the last National Executive Council meeting”.
Even though The Tide thinks that Ebube Agu should have come much earlier, it is a development that is welcome and should be embraced, encouraged, supported and assisted by not only all the good people of the South-East region, but also every patriotic, peace-loving and well-meaning citizen of Nigeria that is interested in seeing the country as a united, stable, peaceful and progressive nation.
With armed killer herdsmen still on the prowl and terrorists and bandits of all shades taking their murderous trade to all parts of the country with little hindrance, it behoves on the governors of the South-East, and indeed every responsible and responsive government at all levels to leverage on everything within their control to ensure optimum security of lives and property in their jurisdiction. Of course, it will amount to a bare-faced shameless abdication of responsibility and a most dangerous precedent to allow a separatist group like the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its Eastern Security Network (ESN) or any other none-state actors in any part of the country seize the initiative of providing security services for the people.
If the worsening home grown terrorism and insurgency tendencies in the South-East region that have taken the worrisome dimension of indiscriminate burning down of police stations and killing of policemen and other security operatives must be halted, the governors of the region must make haste in ensuring that Ebube Agu becomes operational without delay. In addition, the outfit should be adequately funded and appropriately equipped to contain the existential threat that IPOB’s ESN represent, while warding off external aggressors and invaders like the armed herdsmen and other violent criminals. In this regard, leaders of the region must resist the tendency to be divided by political interests. The governors must discountenance party affiliations while the political class in general must consider the security of the lives of the people far more important than their individual or sectional political ambitions in their attitude towards Ebube Agu. The traditional institution and the community leaders must rally round and take ownership of the initiative in order to make it achieve set objectives.
The Federal Government on its part should not withhold every needed assistance and support to make Ebube Agu succeed. To begin with, all the security agencies should be directed to work closely with the new organisation in training, equipping and exchange of intelligence so that it can effectively fill in the gaps that exist in the overall security architecture in the region and the country at large.
Going forward, we urge the governors and political leadership of the South-South geo-political region to spring into action in birthing its own formation in the similitude of Amotekun in the South-West and Ebube Agu in the South-East without further delay. There is already palpable fear among the people of the region that except something is done quickly, the criminal elements that are being hounded around the region and the country in general, may pour into the zone. This must not be allowed to happen. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine. The time to act is now as otherwise strange occurrences like the brutal attack of security personnel by unidentified armed groups at their duty posts are already being recorded in parts of the region.
Finally, we think that the Federal Government must give attention to the issues of restructuring the country, devolution of powers and the creation of state police with all the urgency that it deserves. If the country must come out of its present travails and save itself the trauma of protracted and generalised armed protest, the process of national dialogue must begin immediately.