When I make points on any issue, I think through my arguments before advancing them to the public. On my call for the host communities to sit up around issues of degenerating security around ifite, it is not a prevarication of government duties, neither is it an indication that government is doing “nothing” to abate the situation.
Here is my point, UNIZIK as a school has a security department largely populated by members of the host communities. It appears more like an unwritten convention to only recruit indigenes into the security department of the school. Whatever be the bias, I think the management of the school understands the primacy of using the locals to “police the school”. Though not arms bearing, but what they represent and the core essence of their job is far more efficacious than a thousand arms.
The lag in community policing is the missing link in the perennial insecurity plaguing ifite and indeed most parts of the Southeast. Now, prior to the coming of Soludo, we all simply resigned to the gross thinking that the gunmen terrorizing parts of the State were unknown, we advanced the argument that gave them some omnipotent cover until Soludo came and began to call evil by its exact name.
Today, we all agree and have come to realize that in areas where these criminals still operate, they enjoy an unusual dose of community support. Uli, Orsumoghu, Isseke, Lilu in Anambra and Awo Idemili in Imo are some of the areas where the locals still define the acts of these boys as a survival strategy for which no one should blame them or interfere. This is a fact!
Awka and Amansea are too small a town that a strong UNIZIK security should have picture perfect intelligence that they must share with security agencies. Where this is not coming the Vice Chancellor should begin to make heads roll — for it is the rat inside that usually notifies the rat outside about the exact place where the fish is preserved in the kitchen.
Government will do its best. However, where there is a complicit silence by the local community, any move by government will continue to seem like guess work. For the Student community, they must now adopt “operation know your Neighbour”. The landlords in the none hostel residence should also adopt same. If the community sits up, this situation will end in a matter of hours.
— Mazi Ejimofor Opara writes from Awka, Anambra State.