Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, announced on Sunday night that his people had summoned up courage and helping security agents with the identities of the ‘unknown gunmen’ ravaging the state.
Soludo made the revelation when he appeared on Politics Today, a popular programme on Channels TV.
While giving an update on last week’s attack on the convoy of Senator Ifeanyi Ubah, the former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria declared that the state cannot be a haven for gunmen who he is convinced have relatives in the communities.
The PUNCH had reported that Ubah’s convoy was attacked around Nkwo Enugwu Ukwu Market area of Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State on his way to Nnewi, his country home on Sunday night.
The gunmen opened fire on the convoy and left five members of the convoy dead and two policemen injured.
Soludo said, “No space in Anambra will accommodate these criminals. Of course, they are known criminals. They come from homes, have parents, relatives and have people from the villages and so on. But thank goodness, people are now coming forward with information about their identities. And that’s how we have been picking them
“We are pursuing them vigorously. We have this lead whether this was an orchestrated or pinpoint attack and all kinds of theories as to why this happened. I can bet you, it won’t be too long before we get them. We are not relenting one minute.”
While taking stock of his six months in government, the governor said eight of the state and local government that were once held hostage have also been raided and taken over with the help of security forces.
While commending the security agents, Soludo expressed confidence that Anambra has now been relatively quiet and peaceful.
“We came into turbulence in the area of security with about eight local governments taken over by the criminals in more than 15 camps and held the state hostage. Even during political electioneering, most of us couldn’t campaign freely in all the senatorial zones.
“As I said, the 15 camps have been decimated, degraded their infrastructure. I don’t think they have the capacity again to come with the kind of ferocity in the past.
“The operations are ongoing. Even yesterday, many operations went on in parks and many communities now have their New Yam Festival which wasn’t possible in the past, especially in eight of the earlier affected local governments.”
“I must commend the people of Anambra State including the stakeholders, security forces, police, navy, army, civil defence and the vigilantes for their massive cooperation in dealing with it.
“Compare to many other places in Nigeria, I dare to say, going by the statistics of the last three months, Anambra is one of the safest places comparatively.”
This is even as he disclosed that the security agencies have secured about four leads and are hot on the chase of the attackers.
He said, “I told you there are many leads and we don’t want to be presumptuous. There are three or four leads. One of them, as you said, could be the targeting of senators. Another lead is that the attack could have been targeted at somebody else and he ran into them and they opened fire. The security agents are on top of the situation.”