Worsening Insecurity Around the Country and The Need for Extra Vigilance~ANCA

ONN Abia North 05.06.2025

PRESS RELEASE!

In view of uncontrolled and unabated killings taking place in Jos Plateau, Sokoto, Zamfara, Borno, Katsina, Niger, Benue, Kaduna, parts of Ebonyi and Enugu by genocidists suspected to have links to Fulani herdsmen, it is not unlikely that the famously promised war by Fulani Nationalism movement in recent years may be finally here with us.

Abia North Consultative Assembly, ANCA, is not oblivious of salient response to the growing insecurity quagmire by the federal government leading to the redeployment of the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede to Benue state; the epicenter of the crisis with other senior officers to fight the insecurity from the front. Not less than 1000 lives have been massacred in just one month as we speak.

We are also not unmindful of the latest statement by the Chief of Defense Staff Lieutenant General Christopher Musa, mulling the possibility of erecting a border wall to check the infiltration of especially our northern borders by cross border foreign militants to destabilize our country. It has gotten to that.

ANCA after discussing these ominous developments, believes that interesting times are back in our country and which demand extra vigilance in especially our frontlines local governments of Abia North. We are of the considered view that what goes around would soon knock at our doors.

The Enugu and Ebonyi corridors are giving us reason to feel irritable discomfort for travelers who daily encounter kidnappings in those routes. The insecurities of the Buhari years seems to be multiplying alarmingly under this present regime with little or no solution by the present leadership.

Our little research by our security committee in ANCA, shows that crimes of armed banditry, kidnappings, robberies, harassment of farmers and general insurgency, happens speedily with daily occurance in the vicinity of our ungoverned spaces without apprehending the culprits. Our investigations also reveal that a good number of these attackers are ex servicemen who are well trained in the art of war and deploy their skills unpatriotically in launching asymmetric conflict against their fatherland.

ANCA is recommending the following immediate remedies in our search for immediate answers to unabating security challenges:

1. The chief of army staff should look beyond just deployment of forces to fight fulani terrorists hiding and launching sporadic attacks from the bushes, but deploy military intelligence as well to unravel their networks of support within military barracks locations.

2. Civilians and non commissioned officers should be barred from mixing and worshipping in the same mosques and churches with officers in the barracks. These are veritable sources of information leakages.

3. Herdsmen and their namas should stop cohabiting within our military barracks but should be made to reside far from the barracks.

4. The military barracks and formations should stop issuing identity cards to civilians operating within the barracks for any reason. Such identifications should be allowed to pass through due process by agencies with the mandates of the law to issue identity instruments.

5. The establishment of forest guards as ordered by President Bola Tinubu few days ago, should be implemented with fiat across the country to stem further breakdown of law and order by presumed herdsmen and hunters.

6. The military should be prepared to assist states that promulgated laws on open grazing ban to enforce those laws. A typical example is Benue, the epicenter of the present crisis.

7. Every community within the flashpoints areas should be helped by the federal security agencies to train and arm its vigilantes to stop further incursion by insurgents.

ANCA believes that injury to one is injury to all. Its time for all of us to join forces to fight this monster before it lands on our doorposts. Let us all be our brothers keepers to fight this lingering debacle. Security should be everyone's business.

Dr. Engr Odo Ijere

President

08037162383

Reverend Dr. Okechukwu Obioha JP

Secretary

08037226917

4th June, 2025