Governor of Ebonyi State, David Umahi, has raised the alarm on conspiracies to incite war in the South Eastern part of the country and urged the people not to become victims of such plans.
The governor also exonerated the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and its security outfit, Eastern Security Network (ESN) from complicity in the spate of attacks on public infrastructure in the South East, especially police formations.
He blamed the attacks on bandits, whom he accused of disguising as ESN.
Appearing on a national television breakfast show, yesterday, Umahi said: “Of late, we have bandits that are now doing a lot of evil and saying they are ESN members.
They commit a lot of crimes and say they are IPOB members and most of the time, IPOB will come and say ‘we have no hands in this. We have no hands in that.
“We have the command of the law to protect lives of our people and we would not allow illegality to thrive in our land. Conflict will not resolve conflict.”
He said governors of the zone would no longer allow criminals have their way and assured the people that establishment of Ebubeagu would tackle insecurity in the region.
“The problem of this country is that people will leave their problems and make your problem their problem. But what some of these people are doing is to incite the South East into war and step aside, and we are not going to buy into that; we are not going to be deceived again,” he said.
The South East has witnessed an increase in violent crimes in the past few months, including the raid on police stations, correctional centres, burning cars and other public property.
While IPOB established ESN to curb the killings by suspected herdsmen, governors in the zone formed a security outfit codenamed Ebubeagu to curb the menace of violent crimes.
