Insecurity: Be Proactive, Madubuike Challenges South East Govs

Former Minister of Education in the Second Republic, Professor Ihechukwu Madubuike has challenged governors of the five South East States to be more proactive in dealing with the existential security challenges facing the region. Madubuike, also frowned at the near absence of the governors at the recently held Southern Governors meeting in Lagos.
Madubuike in a public opinion article, queried the governors over their lack of seriousness in tacking the insecurity that has engulfed the once peaceful South Eastern part of the country. 
He cited the last meeting of the governors with federal government delegation where the issue of insecurity formed the ninth item on the communique as indicative of the fact that the governors are not committed insuring the protection of lives and property of people and residents of the South East Region.
He described as unacceptable the relegation of issue of security of lives and property to the background at the meeting with the Federal side, insisting that secession was only “a consequential matter”.

According to the former minster, “absence of the agitation for a separate existence and its condemnation by either elders or youths, of persons of South East extraction, is not tantamount to peace in the South East”.
Madubuike noted that the resignation of the chairman of Ebube Agu, General Abel Obi Umahi, and the circumstances surrounding that “resignation are not savory and suggest a still birth” of the security outfit as conceived by the governors.
According to him, the  governors have not addressed fully the implications of the allegations raised by  General Umahi,  noting that no “General goes to the battle front without the necessary armaments”.
“Insecurity, in my estimation, is the greatest challenge in Igboland today, it should be given the same rating, if not a   higher rating as our genuine concern for restructuring the distracted Nigerian polity”, the former minster of Education further submitted.
He noted that a well secured South East Region in a restructured Nigeria would help in dealing with the twin monsters of youth unemployment and de-industrialization going on in the region. 
Madubuike stated that tackling the two problems of insecurity and restructuring would also help “achieve the ideal Ebube Agu, not only of means but also of the mind, an existential aphorism that will ensure self-apprehension and induce an Igbo renaissance, a rebirth of a can-do spirit” for which the people of the region were known for.
On the near absence of South East governors at the just concluded Southern Governors Meeting in Lagos, Madubuike frowned at the development, saying that the “poor showing and non -presence of most of South East Governors at the last meeting of Southern Nigerian Governors  in Lagos calls for  a serious reflexive thinking”.
He insisted that if for any reason most of the Governors from the South East could not make it to the meeting, they (the South East Governors) should have asked for a postponement of the meeting to a better time that they would be in attendance.
He reminded the Governors that “perception is sometimes, as important as reality, and the thinking that their absence is for selfish reasons is resonating in many places”, pointing out that such such perception “is not good for a people noted for pace setting”.
Madubuike therefore challenged the Igbo leadership and those at its  democratic apex, to retool their “present self-serving strategy, and join the rest of Nigerians calling for a change of the status quo”, warning them not to “play the second fiddle nor adorn the ostrich mentality”.
End.