Enugu: Politicisation of criminality by political parties

BY CHIDOZIE OBODOZIE

There need not be blame games between opposing political parties or contrarian citizens and government officials about an umbilical cord between the government and law enforcement in the country. If citizens feel paralysed by the current law enforcement system, it is the duty of the government in charge of law enforcement to research in collaboration with experts on why and how to fix whatever problems or challenges that may call for solution.

Enugu state under the leadership of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has made tremendous efforts in curbing incessant attacks from what one who looks deeper will find to be a copycat criminal activity in a bid to drive an agenda against perceived ethnic group. Others use the criminal actions of these elements to score cheap political points thus downplaying the efforts of the government and law enforcement agencies across the state.

That criminality and banditry have reached an embarrassing level in recent times, raising the spectre of insecurity in the state, is stating the obvious. The latest is the gruesome killing of Eha Amufu and a few others two weeks ago and the ransacking of the communities is a sad tale but when the story broke on the internet, it was pinned on Fulani herdsmen, this automatically generated a lot of ethnic schism amongst the people.

In a recent wave of developments, the law enforcement agencies have arrested some gunmen who are suspected to be the perpetrators of these recent unrest in the state.

In the wake of that dastardly act, there have been claims and counter-claims as to who the perpetrators are. Are they robbers or herdsmen or the infamous unknown gunmen aka UGM? This seemed a big question.

Without waiting for the police to investigate, make arrests and get to the bottom of this heinous act, some writers, commentators and ethnic loyalists have reached a conclusion and gone on overdrive.

In my view, it doesn’t serve any useful purpose to not allow the police to discharge their function conclusively before making conclusive statements on the killing. It’s only by strengthening the police and helping them perform their work well that we can make the desired progress in curbing the increasing wave of criminality in the land.

Criminality does not respect boundaries. Crime does not have colour, ethnicity or religion. No ethnicity or religious group is immune to it. A crime is a crime and criminals are criminals pure and simple. The profiling of any group as responsible for all the crime in the land is perilous.

There are bad eggs in every group and all of us must join hands to fish out these bad eggs when they rear their heads by perpetrating criminality. We must allow the police to crack the crime when it occurs and bring the perpetrators to justice.