President Muhammadu Buhari has approved a fresh range of solutions, including the deployment of more security personnel, arms and ammunition to douse the security situation in South-East Nigeria.

Imo Governor Hope Uzodinma, who revealed the outcome of his meeting with Buhari in Abuja, also denied allegations of the culpability of his administration in the reign of terror that had pervaded the state, describing such allegations as illogical.

Buhari invited the Governor over recent security developments within his state, as well as the entirety of the Southeast region.

The President also met with the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, and his Chief Economic Adviser, Professor Doyin Salami, in two other separate meetings over the crises rocking the power sector and economy in general.

Disclosing some details of the conversation he held with the President, the Governor said Buhari granted all his requests with regards to solving the security crises.

“You must have heard that the President sent for me and I have gone to see him and based on issues, which we have adequately addressed, particularly the resurgence of insecurity in the Southeast and what is required to ensure that it’s properly controlled.

“We discussed all that and he took seriously my recommendations and indeed I can tell you he immediately gave approval to all that, which includes increase in manpower to security agencies and then other logistics supports, ranging from additional arms and ammunition.

“Also, we are making use of our local vigilante and the involvement of community leaders to ensure that through community arrangement, additional security is provided to the people.

“You will recall that few days ago, the home of the President-General of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo was attacked by bandits and the same night, a police station in Umuguma, Owerri West, was also attacked.

“For a very long time, if you’ll remember, we’ve never had such a situation and this happened at a time that people are already relaxed and thought that insecurity has become a thing of the past.

“But to the glory of God, security agencies rose to it, the second day they were probably repelled by security agencies, particularly men of the Directorate of State Service. They’ve been very useful, working with other security agencies.

“We didn’t also wait, we initiated a community-oriented program where the vigilante approach has been re-enacted and the community leaders have shown sufficient interest. We’ll get there.”

Reacting to the allegation that his administration might be culpable in the crisis in his state, as it had been accused of sponsoring some of the people behind the trouble, including the ‘unknown gunmen’ phenomenon, Uzodinma described such thinking as abnormal.

“Well, thank God that you called us government and I don’t know how a government, with paraphernalia of office available to it, ranging from the army, the police, the air force, the navy, the DSS, the Civil Defense, will now go for non-state actors to be used for governance.

“As civilized people, you also represent the elites, you should be able to advise such minds to reason well and think well because the only person that officially has power for coercion is government. If anything is to go by, we are a God-fearing government, that is why we have not used force as the only way of controlling the violence in Imo State.”

Reacting, Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, on Wednesday, said the recent approval by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) that additional security personnel be deployed in the South-East will aggravate extrajudicial killings in the zone.

HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the path to lasting peace and security in Imo, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi and Abia is true federalism which allows state governors to have control over security agents as the Chief Security Officers of their individual states.

HURIWA faulted the deployment of extra security agents, saying such moves have not worked in the past but worsened the security crisis in Imo and other South-East states.

Onwubiko said, “To start with, the effects of violence, killings, arsons, organised terrorism that have swept around Imo State is worrisome. The constant deployments of soldiers and other security agents in the state and others in the South-East zone have proven ineffective. It is even disturbing that soldiers whose job mainly is to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria are deployed in Igboland.

“At this time, the deployment of more security agents is a bad decision. The move showcases the non-functionality of federalism as it should be because governors who are Chief Security Officers of their states have no control of even the police and so we see a dysfunctional democracy and federalism in which the President who heads the executive arm of government at the centre ‘summoning’ governors who ought to be the executive heads of their federation units.

“This is the strongest reason for the right constitutional amendments to confer proper executive powers to the federating units in the area of securing their people.

“Secondly, sending more troops and arms at first value is good but it won’t solve the problem because the Federal Government is not tackling the problems from the roots which is to reorganise the heads of the security agencies in the South East so they are more effective.”

“Furthermore, the collaborators of the attackers within the security agencies in the South-East must be identified and fished out and prosecuted for sabotaging the security of the South-East zone. Unless these saboteurs amongst the security agents are fished out and flushed out, there is no possibility of resolving the problems in a lasting manner since the conflict entrepreneurs who benefit from the terrorism in the South East will continue to stoke up the fire of violence.

“Let the President do the needful. Sending all the soldiers to the East won’t solve the problems but will heighten tension because more innocent Igbo youth may be killed by these armed security forces.”