Umahi: Insecurity in Ebonyi worsened after I defected — it’s politically motivated

David Umahi, governor of Ebonyi, says insecurity in his state worsened after he defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Umahi said this on Sunday when he featured on Channels Television’s ‘Sunday Politics’.

The Ebonyi governor defected from the PDP in November 2020, and attributed his decision to the “injustice” done to the south-east.

When asked about the worsening insecurity in Ebonyi, the governor commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his efforts, adding that “if we didn’t have the kind of president that is very humane and not vindictive, nobody would have known where Nigeria would have been by now”.

While saying Buhari has helped the south-east “tremendously” in security, Umahi alleged that the insecurity in his state is politically motivated.

“This thing started like a joke and today, it is quite a big issue. In my state, there was a time that the insecurity was highly politically motivated and the targets were Imo state, the APC and Ebonyi state, the moment I defected. We didn’t have this large scale of insecurity in my state until I defected,” he said.

Umahi said in an effort to curb insecurity in Ebonyi, the state government engaged the traditional rulers and community leaders.

“What we’ve done in Ebonyi state is bottom-top approach. We had to engage some of the bandits and ask what the problem was. If it’s infrastructure, we’ve done that; if it’s job curation, we have curated jobs,” he said.

“The bandits said they are angry about lack of what to do. And so, we said if their only problem is that they don’t have formal education or jobs, we said if they will stop attacks on our strategic infrastructure, killing of our people, and attacking security agencies, we can rehabilitate them.

“We have rehabilitated a number of them.”