…Says There Plots By Some Elements To Incite War In South East
The Chairman of South East Governors’ Forum and Governor of Ebonyi State, Mr David Umahi, has raised the alarm on plots to incite war in the South East and called on the people of the region, which enjoys peace not to fall for such plans by the enemies of the South East.
The northern part of Nigeria has been under intense terror attacks by Boko Haram, Cattle rustlers, Fulani herdsmen, kidnapping of school children among other terrible vices. During the lockdown, it was reported that some elements were secretly moving thousands of jobless young men from the north to the South-East, but the governors of the east treated the development with kid gloves.
With horrible violent attacks similar to what is happening in the north now crystalising in the east, governor Umahi has finally declared that the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its security outfit, Eastern Security Network (ESN) are not involved in the spate of attacks on public infrastructure in the South East, especially police formations. Rather, he blamed the attacks on bandits, whom he accused of buck passing their crimes on ESN.
The governor who spoke on national television breakfast show, said: “Of late, we have bandits that are now doing a lot of evil and saying they are ESN members. They commit a lot of crimes and say they are IPOB members and most of the time, IPOB will come and say ‘we have no hands in this. We have no hands in that. We have the command of the law to protect lives of our people and we would not allow illegality to thrive in our land. Conflict will not resolve conflict.”
He said governors of the zone would no longer allow criminals have their way and assured the people that establishment of Ebubeagu would tackle insecurity in the region.
“The problem of this country is that people will leave their problems and make your problem their problem. But what some of these people are doing is to incite the South East into war and step aside, and we are not going to buy into that; we are not going to be deceived again,” he said.
In recent months, the South East has witnessed an increase in violent crimes, including the raid on police stations, prison centres, burning cars and other public property. While IPOB established ESN to curb the killings by suspected herdsmen, governors in the zone formed a security outfit codenamed Ebubeagu to stem the menace of violent crimes.
