The Association of South East Town Unions, ASETU, has described community policing project of the South East Governors, in conjunction with Nigeria Police as a complete failure in the region.

The association said that the reason for the failure was not far from its framework that excluded the town unions, a vital organ for community mobilisation and security mechanism in Igboland.

The community leaders, therefore, asked the south east governors to go back to the regional security network proposal they said was adopted by majority opinion in the zone.

ASETU’s verdict was contained in it’s communique released after two days of emergency security summit in Enugu, during the weekend.

National President-General of ASETU, Chief Emeka Diwe who read the communique also said that the summit x-rayed the issue of producing a Nigerian President of Igbo extraction in 2023 and advised that such a choice should be made out of competence and integrity.

According to Diwe, “much that we advocate equity in the rotation of the presidency of Nigeria and acknowledge the right of the Igbo to produce the next president of Nigeria, we, however, wish to state that integrity, competence and credibility must take pre-eminence in the choice of whom Ndigbo will put forward for the position.”

On the issues of insecurity in the region, ASETU resolved that “the only panacea to the ongoing atrocities of the herdsmen is the enactment of Anti-Open Grazing Laws, and we request the governors and the respective Houses of Assembly once again to immediately pass legislations to that effect.

“We insist that for the ongoing community policing programme of the government of the South East to be effective, there must be the involvement and full participation of the town unions at all levels of the policing arrangement.

“We, however, state categorically as leaders of all the communities in Igboland that what we want is a pan South East regional security outfit. This is what our people want and this is the only framework that can guarantee full security of lives and property in our land.”

The association equally reviewed the recent EndSARS violent protests and scorned at the profiling of Igbo citizens as being irresponsible. It also harped on the benefits of returning Igbo investments in diaspora back to homeland and warned the federal government on the dangers of continued exclusion of South East from the national security leaderships.

The meeting was attended by all the local government areas in Igboland represented through the coordinators of town unions, representatives of all the community youth leaders as well as women leaders; representatives of Igbo Town Unions across Nigeria and in the Diaspora. (Vanguard)

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