FG launches ‘Operation Restore Peace’ to stabilise 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 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).