Innocent Onoh
The Southern Solidarity Alliance (SSA) has said that the claim that those gun-wielding men lynched and burnt to death by an angry mob in Uromi, Edo State, looks suspicious, calling for a thorough investigation of the matter to unravel the true identity of the victims.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator Mr. Ndubuisi Okafor, the group which also blamed the unfortunate incident on what it called an ineffective policing system in Nigeria, believed that closer cooperation between the police and communities’ vigilantes would prevent a repeat of such in future, even as it threw its weight behind the decentralization of the police system.
“The Southern Solidarity Alliance (SSA) sends condolences to the families of the killed Northerners in Uromi. It was an unfortunate incident. The police if they were working with the vigilantes, should have taken the suspects into custody,” it said
According to the group, “This entire matter should be thoroughly and objectively unraveled by the police and intelligence agencies.
“To forestall these slides into anarchy, the Southern Solidarity Alliance (SSA) demands the following:
“1. High-powered investigation into the killing of the traveling Northerners, their actual mission in Uromi, Southern Nigeria, and the overall Insecurity caused by kidnappers and armed herdsmen in the area as well as in other parts of Southern Nigeria.
“2. Urgent amendments to the constitution to provide for State police and community vigilantes* (at the community level). This appears to be the present remedy to failed policing and would reinforce policing efforts. If those armed victims came from Elele, it took the local vigilante to intercept what evaded the eagle eyes of the police and other law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community. Videos of caches of arms and ammunition recovered by local vigilantes are all seen on social media. They know their terrain well.
“3. All communities in Southern Nigeria should set up community vigilantes to boost their security and ward off attacks.* We have cried out for too long to our governments on the issues of insecurity, but they appear to be unperturbed. Make no mistake about it; our security is in our hands as counselled by General Danjuma. Secure yourselves, collaborate with the existing police, and intensively follow up in all cases.
“4. Southern State Governors should set up, professionalize, train, fund, coordinate and protect community vigilantes to check all forms of attacks*. They should ensure the prosecution of suspects to the letter. This would ensure that their subjects are no longer easy prey to invading forces. They should shoulder their security responsibilities with every seriousness.
“5.Legalization of arms possession.* Only God knows what those killed suspects used those guns for. A situation whereby some citizens are armed, and some are unarmed makes predators and prey on the citizens. This needs to be corrected. In the face of failed policing and brazen attacks by non state actors, citizens should be authorized to defend themselves
“Where the policing system was effective, it would never have gotten to the level of lynching.
“We advise those bent on harvesting war over the unfortunate failed policing system by threatening attacks on law-abiding Southerners in the North to desist because one form of violence begets another.
“We will hold Northerners and their State governors responsible and accountable for any act of lawlessness and bloodletting against our people. We also advise all Southerners residing in, or visiting the North to please stay safe and take measures to safeguard their safety.
“Given the incessant attacks on Southern villagers by armed herdsmen and many cases of kidnapping of Southerners right here in Southern Nigeria, it’s the duty of the police and other enforcement arms to rise to every occasion; the duty of the communities to protect themselves; the police and the state governments to coordinate such protection efforts by the communities by giving the vigilantes good professional orientation and all the help and encouragement they needed in executing the local security functions. Where this is lacking, it follows that the police most particularly failed in its duty.
“The failed present policing system has pushed policing function to the communities, states, and geopolitical zones.
Communities owe themselves some protection, and it’s the job of the police to back up the efforts of various communities and that of the State government to coordinate well internal security. In that instance, the best to do was to record and document the suspects, and then the police take over. But the police and the state government were very far away.
“Besides these, It’s curious that gun-bearing hunters are now driving the long distance from Elele in Rivers State to the North. And this is an era when kidnapping, invasion of villages, and herdsmen attacks have become the order of the day, most particularly along that axis.
“Seriously, do we have northern hunters in the Southern forests? And Southern hunters in the northern forests? Where were the victims hunting? Which animals have they ever caught? What were they doing with guns?
It is important to investigate this hunting claim to a logical conclusion.
“The loss of faith in the federal police to arrest and prosecute certain offenders within the Southern region remains outstanding. That was why the suspects were not handed over to the police by the villagers on their own, which they would have done under normal circumstances.
“It’s also indicting that these suspects with their guns traveled from Elele in Rivers State to Uromi in Edo State without any interception by our federal police. An interception would have prevented the bloody intervention by the local vigilante. It was only the local vigilante that picked them up. Is this not how gunmen attack villages overnight and escape back to their base without arrest or detection? It’s the responsibility of the police and other enforcement agencies to do their jobs.”