Herdsmen Menace: Benin Monarch Proposes Security Summit

By Lucky Isibor

The Benin monarch, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku-Akpolokpolo, Oba Ewuare II, has said that the palace has concluded arrangements to host a security summit in Edo state at a date to be announced soon to trash out security challenges facing the kingdom.

The summit, according the monarch, has become imperative to develop a workable template that would tackle the menace and inhuman activities of suspected cattle rearers, kidnapping, armed robbery and other social crimes and criminalities currently ravaging the Benin kingdom and Edo state in general.

Oba Ewuare disclosed this when he played host to the new Edo State Commissioner of Police, CP Johnson Kokumo, in his palace in Benin City.

Omo N’Oba stressed that the proposed summit was a follow-up of the earlier summit held over a year ago to give stronger bite as well as address the grey areas in the security blueprint earlier developed to effectively curb the current wave of crimes in the state.

The royal father stressed further that the palace would also use security summit to set up a team comprising the police and palace Chiefs to check the indiscriminate intimidation and arrest of innocent citizens of the kingdom by some police officers.

The monarch frowned at the exploitative and high level of impunity of police in arresting innocent citizens in the kingdom over communal and land issues, noting that the police were being misused, creating more problems in many communities.

Omo N’Oba pointed out that apart from economic development, investors are also attracted to an environment where peace and security reign.

The monarch, who was full of praises to ancestors for the deployment of the new police commissioner to the state, charged the new police boss to double his effort in ridding the state of all forms of crimes, assuring that the palace would do its best to give the needed support for effective policing in the state.

Earlier, CP Kokumo told the monarch that he was at the palace to seek his royal prayers and blessings ahead of the onerous task to be carried out in the state.

CP Kokumo vowed that impunity and corruption among officers and men of the force in Edo state command would be tackled head on, adding that the current wave of crimes in the state would be reduced to the barest minimum as the command will key into Oba Ewuare’s vision of ensuring absolute peace in the state.