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FG set to disarm
youths in Egbiraland — Idris
From ISAIAH ABRAHAM
At the request of the Kogi state government, the federal government
is considering the formation of a joint task force of the army and
the police to mop up arms and ammunition in Egbiraland in the
central senatorial district of the state.
Large arms and ammunitions were said to have been brought and
distributed among the youths in the area by violence minded
politicians in the build-up to the re-run governorship election in
the state with a number of the arms intercepted by vigilant
policemen deployed to maintain law and order during the election.
Governor Ibrahim Idris who made the revelation on the move to mop up
the arms said the request by the state government to president Umaru
Musa Yar’adua followed an agreement reached between the government
and community leaders on crisis in Egbiraland and how to disarm the
youths to check violence in that part of the state.
The governor who spoke to journalists in Lokoja while counting his
first one hundred days in office since his return to Lugard House
after the re-run election said ‘ we have all collectively agreed and
signed that since they have provided the youths with these things
they cannot retrieve them again so what do we do?’
He said ‘we have a common understanding that there is the need to
invite the federal government so that the police and the army will
have a joint patrol to go out and mop-up all the arms in Kogi
central senatorial district.’
He said ‘ they have agreed, they have written to me and I have also
written with a copy of the letter which they wrote attached and one
on one with the president I delivered it to him.’ Idris assured that
he was working on it “so that we can see how best to do it,’
pointing out that ‘nobody wants to kill anybody but then there must
be a way out but we must first of all mop up all the arms and
ammunition in the Kogi central senatorial district
He explained that ‘there are three different problems in the central
senatorial district, we have the chieftaincy problem which has to
with clannishness, then we have the masquerades, which they believe
have be despite the fact that we have banned them. Some of them
still come out , these are areas we normally notice problems . So
the three main problems we have in the central senatorial districts
are clannish, masquerades and politics.’
He said ‘in solving the chieftaincy tussle we have been able to
create more first class and second class chiefs, all to make sure we
bring everybody together and that is helping us a lot. But you know
when things have gone terribly bad and you want to make it right it
is not easily achievable.
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