Police Inspector General Usman Baba, launching Operation Restore Peace in Enugu.
The Police Command in Anambra State has said the order given by Acting Inspector General Usman Baba to personnel to take the war against crime and criminals to their dens was not targeted at innocent and lawful citizens in the South East.
DSP Toochukwu Ikenga, the Police Public Relations Officer in Anambra, said this in a statement in Awka on Thursday, according to NAN.
Baba had during the launch of ‘Operation Restore Peace’ and return the South East zone to its pride, said the region was known for being peaceful, tolerant, industrious and entrepreneurial.
He said that the region had in recent time witnessed an upsurge in cases of kidnapping, armed robbery, communal violence and attacks on security agents and our national infrastructures.
But addressing the concerns, Ikenga said it was a deliberate effort by the Police high command to stabilise security order in the South East.x
The PPRO said that the operation ‘Restore Peace’ was formed essentially to implement the objective.
According to him, the current Police high command was deeply concerned about the recent spike of crime in the zone, most especially, deliberate attacks on security agents and our national assets.
“The operation is unique and targeted to restore peace, law and order, we therefore urge Anambra residents to work with the Police and other security agents.
“I want to assure everybody that this operation is people driven, and at every time shall be reviewed to address issues.
“It is not against innocent and lawful members of the society,” he explained.
The Federal Government had on Tuesday launched ‘Operation Restore Peace’ to stabilise South East.
The Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba, had on Tuesday launched Operation Restore Peace in the South East, with a charge on the police to live up to their constitutional obligations by taking the battle to the doorsteps of criminal elements in the region.
Operation Restore Peace is part of the government’s effort to address growing insecurity, attacks on security infrastructure and secessionist agitation in the zone.
The launch of the campaign was in line with the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari on the urgent need to secure life and property in the country.
While flagging off the exercise at the Michael Okpara Square, Enugu, the IGP expressed dismay at the state of insecurity in the region, stressing that the conduct of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its Eastern Security Network (ESN) was a security threat in the region.
He told his officers that it was their responsibility to restore law and order, adding that the police under the current dispensation would not shy away from its primary mandate of restoring peace and order.
Explaining that Operation RP was conceptualised to achieve the goal, he said the operation would take place simultaneously in all the South-East states.
“There must come a time in the life of a nation when we, as a people, must strengthen our will and resolve to mobilise and deploy all our assets towards confronting these criminal elements, take the battle to their doorsteps, and make a clear statement that the few deviants within us cannot and will not re-order our cherished national values. The time is now.
“The trend has, of late, been laced with inter-ethnic intolerance and separatist agitation as championed by IPOB and its armed wing, the ESN. The separatist agenda of this group has assumed an armed dimension in which important political and community leaders, as well as personnel and assets of the Nigerian police, military and other security agencies, are being constantly targeted in clearly well-coordinated, premeditated violent attacks in the region.”
He lamented that aside from deepening inter-ethnic prejudice and intolerance in the region, IPOB activities resulted in massive loss of property and fatalities as well as violent campaigns that were beginning to have a damaging effect on the socio-economic development of the region.”
Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, noted that the occasion could not have come at a better time, “given the bourgeoning insecurity in the country”, and expressed optimism that the exercise would herald the re-jigging and re-tooling of the internal security architecture in the South to bring it up to speed with emerging dimensions of criminality.
“That expectation, in my judgment, seems more realisable with the reassuring presence of the AIG here today,” the governor said.
At the event, the governors of Ebonyi, Imo and Abia states were represented by their deputies, while Anambra governor was represented by former Delta State Commissioner of Police, Ayo Aduba (rtd).
