Mr. Clement Nwankwo, Chairman Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre Abuja chaired the first session of presentations of

commissioned studies of security and governance challenges in South East Nigeria during the CLEEN organized summit in Owerri. In his opening remarks, he said that Nigerians are faced daily with new challenges arising from new cultures emerging because of security challenges. He mentioned that impunity, abuse of resources, corruption, governance without inputs from the masses and such things as these are all the causes of insecurity in Nigeria.

Mr. Nwankwo said that Nigerian Government is not matching their words with action against the criminals as seen in other countries like America. He gave instances of the recent Boston Marathon terrorist bomb attack where President Barrack Obama told Americans that the perpetrators must be brought to book. In less than two days arrests began and the people of America can trust such government that matches action to words. In Nigeria, the government and government aides make empty statements in the face of crimes, injustices and killings.

He also drew attention to the security CCTV Cameras installed around Abuja FCT with logistics and resources of monumental capacity and nature from tax payers’ money but the cameras have never worked one day nor is there any hope that it is going to work soon. The monitoring and surveillance the camera were to be used for is not being done and no one is monitoring anything, beside he revealed that the police are not equipped physically and psychologically for the great task of tackling crime and criminality.

With the above background, Dr. Ukoha Ukiwo took the floor to deliver his lecture. According to Ukiwo, the study reveals decline and marginalization of South East region of Nigeria, crime and insecurity, victimhood, poor governance viz lack of citizens’ participation in governance and lack of democracy or governance dividends and citizens’ alienation. Historically Dr. Ukiwo posited, the South East region of Nigeria hitherto known as area filled with the best industrious and progressive minds later in 1980 started showing signs of decline and marginalization and took a negative turn of downward decline because of emergence of opportunistic leaders.

Dr. Ukiwo pointed out that South East region of Nigeria hitherto known for business vibrancy and friendliness has turned out as the most business unfriendly environment in Nigeria in 2010 leading immense capital fright and impoverishment of citizens of the zone. The approach of the study includes focus on initial dynamics viz what use to be, responses of the states, responses of the citizens and examined the challenges of the states in ensuring good governance and security for their subjects.

Some of the questions that helped the study Ukiwo said include the following: What are the governance challenges facing the states? What are the sources of these challenges? etc. Answers to these questions and more helped the researchers of the study to form their opinions and arrive at the final findings. Key findings from the study reveals strong and casual link between poor governance and insecurity. It also shows that politics drives insecurity, policies and reforms engender insecurity in form of backlash and leads to declining social capital.

The methodology applied to arrive at results of the study includes survey methods, qualitative and quantitative sources, key informants, interview, including CLEEN Foundation National Crime Victimization Survey. Also key governance issues or indicators outlined by the study include: poor presence of security in cities of South East Nigeria with case study of Aba in Abia State.

Narrowing the study down to Abia State, Dr. Ukiwe said that the following are identified as issues arising from security and governance challenges in Abia State: Poor presence of security in Abia, Political insecurity, Patronage politics, Corruption and lack of accountability, Youth unemployment and Rising rate of poverty. He added that rising crime rates and experience of crimes, poor capacity of security institutions to tackle crimes in the State, poor relation between security agents and other security institutions, corruption in security institutions, collapse of community security and privatization of public security.

According to Dr. Ukiwo, the Government Abia State has responded to the security and governance issues and challenges in the following ways: By starting some project like New face of Abia Socio Economic Development Project which seek to empower the youth and provide employment.

He recommended that the following policies must be put in place in order to scale down the mounting security and governance challenges in Abia State: strengthening public institutions in the State, building trust in public institutions and promoting public participation.