Abia IPAC Chairman, Hon. Ceekay Igara
Insecurity: Govts should partner communities to evolve homegrown solution – IPAC chieftain
[From BONIFACE OKORO, Umuahia]
Chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Abia chapter, Ceekay Igara has urged states and local governments across the country to partner with various communities at the grassroots to evolve homegrown solution to the devastating nation-wide security challenge.
Igara, who made the suggestion during an interview with The Oracle Today in Umuahia said such a partnership should lead to the evolution of a security architecture that would serve the peculiar security needs of localities across the country.
Igara maintained that the fight against insecurity ravaging the country should be localized by institutionalizing community policing, using the local vigilante groups, which personnel must be drawn from the local people, as the nucleus of grassroots security operations.
The Labour Party chieftain insisted that no visitor would know the terrain of a village more than the indigenes, adding that locales do not like trusting their security with “aliens.” He, however, said that it would be necessary for local security operatives to collaborate with federal security agencies, including the military and Police, by sharing intelligence with them.
“It should be the responsibility of the state government, the local government to partner with the development unions of the communities to secure the environment,” Igara said.
The Ohafia local government area-born politician said: “There are people in my community who have never seen a policeman throughout their lifetime. They don’t even know what you are saying when you say Police. So what they trust and believe more are these people who are members of the village security system who they see on daily basis, the vigilantes. These are the things that work, they compliment the efforts of the national Police.”
“So, I still believe that we need a state police, we need a local government police and we also need village, community policing. Reason: it will be easy to identify visitors. If you come to my village now, it won’t take an hour to identify you as a visitor. That is the best solution. Every community should know who is coming around, who is living there. So, I think we should go back to the community,” he submitted.
Igara said he was moved to tears when he watched on television, how corpses were being carried in Jos to the state House of Assembly during the recent killings that engulfed the state.
“I said people are no longer taking human lives as anything. Live is no longer sacred. I don’t think that is what God planned when He was creating us,” he lamented.
He expressed surprise over the spate of insecurity in Nigeria as he recalled that when the present All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government assumed power in the country, the first thing they did was to mop up arms.
“They said hunters, everybody; if you have guns, send it to the Police. And after that, we started seeing pockets of militancy in the South South, kidnapping in the South East and South West, Boko Haram and banditry in the North.
“So, I call on the state government, the federal government and every other person in the country, whatever that needs to be done, to stop this madness should be done,” he said.
