Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba, has launched Operation Restore Peace in the South East

The Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Usman Baba, has 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 from the region.

Operation Restore Peace is a portion of this government’s effort to address growing insecurity strikes on security infrastructure and secessionist agitation in the zone.

The initiation of the campaign was in accord with the directive of President Muhammadu Buhari about the urgent need to secure property and life in the country.

While hammering off the exercise in the Michael Okpara Square, Enugu, the IGP voiced dismay at the state of insecurity in the area, stressing that the conduct of the Native People of Biafra (IPOB) and its Eastern Security Network (ESN) was a safety threat in the area.

He told his officers that it was their responsibility to restore law and order, including that the police under the present dispensation wouldn’t shy away from its primary mandate of restoring order and peace.

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Explaining that Operation RP was conceptualised to achieve the goal, he said the operation would occur simultaneously in all the South-East states.

“There must come a time in the life of a nation when we, as a people, need to fortify our will and resolve to mobilise and deploy all of our assets towards facing these criminal elements, take the struggle to their doorsteps, and make a clear announcement that the couple deviants in us can’t and won’t 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 evidenced by IPOB and its armed wing, the ESN. The separatist agenda of the group has assumed an armed measurement in which major community and political leaders, in addition to personnel and resources of the Nigerian authorities, military and other security agencies, are being continuously targeted at clearly well-coordinated, premeditated violent strikes in the area.”

He lamented that besides deepening inter-ethnic prejudice and intolerance in the area, IPOB activities led to massive loss of property and fatalities as well as violent campaigns that were beginning to have a damaging influence on the socio-economic development of the region.”

Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, mentioned that the event couldn’t have come at a better time, “given the bourgeoning insecurity in the nation”, and expressed optimism that the practice would predominate the re-jigging and re-tooling of the internal security structure in the South to bring it up to speed with emerging measurements of criminality.

“That expectation, in my judgment, looks more realisable with the reassuring presence of the AIG here today,” the governor said.

In the event, the governors of Ebonyi, Imo and Abia states were represented by their deputies, while Anambra governor has been symbolized by former Delta State Commissioner of Police, Ayo Aduba (rtd).