By Fola James
Following the creation of the Eastern Nigeria Security Network Nnandi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB had tacitly taken a swipe at Northern,Arewa leaders calling them oppressors of the Igbo. He noted that the security outfit will defend the interest of his people.
Kanu said “We have allowed ourselves to become willing tools of the caliphate in our destruction. Unfortunately too, some Igbo people have been cajoled and intimidated to the point where they now deny their own identity.
“We present our first and last line of defence, the Eastern Security Network to end years of terrorism in our land.”
But the immediate past Secretary-General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Anthony Sani has now fired back at the IPOB leader, who he said is trying to intimidate people from the north by creating ENSN.
Sani who also criticized the emergence of other regional security body such as Amotekun, created recently by governors of the south west to protect the area from insecurity, said what the country needed at this time, is to empower the police and other security bodies in the country to combat crime.
The immediate past Secretary-General of the Arewa Consultative Forum, Anthony Sani, has said he is not in support of regional outfits such as Amotekun in the South-West and the recently launched Eastern Security Network for the South-East.
Sani noted that what Nigeria needed to tackle insecurity was to empower the police by way of expansion of the workforce, training, equipment and motivation by salary increment – and not by creating regional outfits.
The ACF chief told Sahara Reporters that northerners living in the South-South and South-East regions of the country would not be threatened by ENSN.
He said, “This Kanu of the IPOB we are talking about; who is he to even launch a security outfit? What is his stand in the South-South and South-East? His group has been banned. He has run away, and he is afraid of coming to Nigeria, and you are saying he is announcing a security outfit.
“To announce and operate where he is? The security outfit can’t even be implemented because he is not in Nigeria. So how can we be threatened by someone who is somewhere else and claiming he has an outfit in Nigeria?”
“The problem of this country is the inadequate number of trained policemen who are well equipped. Other security outfits are also not well equipped; the numbers are not enough; they are not well trained; do you think they will perform magic?
“I am not really in favour of all these regional outfits. I am more towards empowering the police by way of number; who are well trained, equipped and well-motivated by way of salary allowance and logistics to secure the country. The issue is not the multiplication of security outfits but poor funding; ill equipping of those available.”
Kanu had, in a statement released on Tuesday, said that failure of Southeast governors to secure the lives and property of Igbo people led to the formation of the Eastern Security Network.
