There have been theatrics exhibited by state Governors of the South East in the past few months, supposedly targeted at clamping down on kidnappers and organ traffickers who masquerade as native doctors in the region.
While some of the moves are commendable, they are merely scratching the surface and not perhaps treating the immediate, remote and root causes of Insecurity in our region. Thereby making it look like the more they try, the worse it gets.
The Insecurity we face are of two kinds; External and Internal.
The external which is defined by the activities of marauding Fulani Herdsmen and their militia whom they bring in to kill, rape and slaughter villagers and farmers who dare to take action against the cattle eating their crops for food.
Then we have the internal being orchestrated by our own people in partnership with the Fulani Herdsmen Militia and security agents to turn our highways and local intercommunal roads into dreaded kidnapping zones.
I will begin with the internal.
The immediate cause of the now blooming Kidnapping industry in our region is simply our weak judicial system.
Those that are involved get away with it. Those that were caught never faced judgement and they are free to go about, brandishing their blood money before everyone, and are praised, honoured with titles and respected in the region, thus encouraging others to follow the same route.
The Attorneys General in South Eastern states appear not to have read their job description very well.
There are hardly high or low profile cases. There’s really no real prosecution of criminals in courts in the South East.
Every criminal case gets decided by police officers in police stations and they just grant bail and that’s the end.
Criminal Investigation seems to have been abolished here. We quickly rush to demolish structures for the cameras and parade criminals in the media and then proceed to release them.
There’s also no real mechanism to report crime or to present cases to the government.
There’s simply no criminal Investigation and criminal justice system.
If people can do anything and get away with it even after being caught by the police, it simply means that more people will do the same.
The remote cause of the internal insecurity is the fact that there’s hunger in the land, biting unemployment and hopelessness everywhere in Igbo Land.
About 7 in 10 graduates in the South East do not have jobs. The ones who have jobs, got it by migrating to Lagos, Abuja or Portharcourt.
Young people have lost faith in the state. 99.9% of you young people in the South East are either planning to run away from Nigeria, hoping and praying to get opportunity to run away, saving money to run away or applying for scholarships to see ways to run away.
If you have a region where more than hundred thousand people graduate from Universities and Polytechnics yearly and only less than 3,000 of them succeed in getting jobs, then you do not have a ticking time bomb. No! You are dancing azonto in a mine field.
The Neo-Capitalist Policies and Agenda of the five South Eastern State Governors make it even more difficult. They keep overstretching the already overstretched young people.
The young graduates who took a humble pie to start riding Keke are being pursued around like criminals and a large chunk of their daily earnings are extorted from them in the name of taxes. One of them was killed in Enugu last year by over tax issues.
The respective governments in South Eastern states seems determined to squeeze the young people till the last drop to see just how much they can take: that’s what we are seeing in Insecurity in the state.
People have lost faith in the leadership of the South Eastern States as the government have repeatedly failed to give hope to the young people and make life better for their people.
And when people lose faith in the State, they take solace in the tribe and take up arms against the state, thereby becoming enemies of the state.
Government can fix internal insecurity is South East by fixing governance.
How do you fix governance?
Government must go into Public Private Partnerships, not in acquisition and construction of hotels but in building and running of factories and industries that can engage hundreds of thousands of graduates churned out in the region yearly.
Governments must put a hold on white elephant projects and their so-called landmark projects and begin to invest in their people.
Government must wear human face and create an atmosphere for businesses to thrive, make South East a place where people want to live in and thrive, not a place where they want to run away from.
In the next volume, I will treat the external insecurity challenges facing us in the South East.
Ugwuagbo Emmanuel Chizoba is a Journalist based in Enugu.