The protesters

By Jethro Ibileke

Inhabitants of Inikorogha communities of Ovia South West local government area of Edo State have staged a peaceful protest against alleged plans to secretly withdraw security personnel that have been maintaining peace in the area. Inikorogha as a whole is made up of over 22 communities.

They were armed with placards with various inscriptions, including: “Come to our aid Mr. Governor; We need peace to do our business in Inikorogha; Armed robbers come here to rape and rob our wives and women among others.

The Chairman of the Inikorogha community, Friday Benson, while addressing journalists, appealed to Governor Godwin Obaseki to see to the extension and increase of security presence in the communities.

He commended the Governor for ensuring that peace and security prevail in Inikorogha and also linking communities through road construction.

According to him, “What we are saying in essence is that nobody should truncate the effort of the Governor by plans to remove security from our communities. There has been a great improvement in security in the last one and a half years. We thank the Governor for providing the needed security

“Before now, evil attacks were meted on our communities, but today we have a strong presence of security with the deployment of special forces at mile 3. Their presence has checkmated insecurity being perpetrated in our land by some unscrupulous elements.”

Also speaking, the Chairman of the Elders Council, Philip Polo, who expressed worry over the news of plans to remove the special forces providing security in the areas, called for more deployment of security personnel.

Polo who thanked Governor Obaseki for his effort in road construction in Inikorogha, added:

“We want to first of all thank Governor Obaseki, he has performed well in terms of infrastructure but sadly that gave birth to some unscrupulous criminals that have made Inikorogha uninhabitable perpetrated by some militants who came through the rivers.

“But when security came everybody was relieved. The situation now is that these same people are trying to pull the strings from behind. We have information that they are trying to see to the withdrawal of the special forces responsible for peace rather we are appealing for more security here.”