The Christmas and New Year celebrations have always witnessed an eruption in the community leadership crisis in Anambra State. The Commissioner of Police in the State, Dr. Ikioye Orutugu speaks to OKEY MADUFORO on the efforts towards restoring peace in the 177 communities throughout the state

You have been visiting communities in Anambra State trying to ensure peaceful Town Union elections. What informed that?

Well, this journey started at the beginning of last year to the end of the year and we have been creating trust and confidence in the minds of Anambra people. People ask what is magic and I tell them to always try to close the gap between the Police and the people and also reduce intimidation and extortion.

I appear in these places not because it is routine but because of the distress situation in Anambra communities and the Command tries as much as possible to checkmate issues or situations that may lead to breakdown of law and order in those communities. As you can see, there are communities in Anambra State that have not had a duly elected executive but caretaker committee executives.

We were in Abba Community and in the past five years they have been operating a caretaker system of governance at the town union level but today they have an elected executive. We also went to Enugu Agidi the other day and we interfaced with both the leaders and traditional rulers and people are now ready to have an elected executive and we prepared the ground for a peaceful electoral process. We provided enough security and the people conducted themselves well in a manner that showed no sign of disorder, and that is what it should be.

From the feelers that I have the number of returnees that in those towns that came home shows that peace has returned to the state. Most crises that you hear or witness in the 177 communities in Anambra State do not have to do with the leadership of the town unions but who controls the sale of communal lands. Since I came onboard as the Commissioner of Police in Anambra State the Command has entertained over 1,000 cases of land dispute which is coated with the election of the Presidents-General of those communities.

If the Command fails to do proper investigation one would get carried away by the impression that it is a case of leadership crisis while in the actual sense it has to do with land dispute. Because things cannot continue to be the same all the time we have to step in and look into the matter. As I speak to you, Awka had a peaceful electoral process and we have just spoken with the Nnewi Community and possibly Alor would be on the line.

What do we expect from other communities that are about to conduct their respective elections?

Well not just some communities but all the communities. You see what I found out here is that the Presidents-General think that their next step is to become the traditional rulers of their towns which is not good and not true. If you have five communities you will discover that the Presidents-General are having issues with their Traditional Rulers.

The concept of being a President-General is not well defined and their respective town union constitution appears not to have for saw these issues and most Presidents-General are just pretending to be in peace with their Traditional Rulers and what you see is more of a cold war and we as law enforcement agencies try our best to put those issues under control.

We do this through conflict resolution and it is not what you do through force but to set up an ad-hoc body cutting across the respective factions and dialogue with them and make them see reasons for peace and harmony to prevail.

Last time we were at Abba town and a faction wanted to hold congress and not election and the other faction said there must be an election. We got there, invited five people per faction and had a dialogue with them. At the end we contacted the Commissioner for Local Government and Town Union Affairs and he confirmed the official letter from his office directing them to conduct elections.

The Commissioner equally confirmed that the Caretaker Executive have been there for five years and that they have been directed to set up an Electoral Committee to conduct the election but the Caretaker Executive failed to comply but people are clamouring for election so we said go ahead with the election and today they have an elected executive of that Town Union.

I have been thinking of putting up my observations about what I have seen so far and I am suggesting some limitations in the power tussle between the Traditional Rulers and the Presidents-General. This memo would indeed be far reaching in containing cases of Town Union crisis and am going to work closely with the office of the Commissioner for local government and Town Union Affairs in that regard.

From my observations the Traditional Rulers are to handle traditional affairs while the President Generals do the administration or governance of the towns and it is not like some other ethnic groups that have an age long established governance that indeed defines the roles of the two bodies that is the Monarch in Council and the Town Union Executive. Those places had a form of Emirates where governance is central and absolute.

Anambra this year has witnessed what it called Mass Return despite the security challenges. Why is it so?

You live in Anambra State and you can answer that question yourself. When we came here, we had serious security issues caused by the activities of gunmen and cultists and we had to take necessary steps to understudy the root cause of that and with the great assistance of the Governor Charles Soludo administration we took actions.

While we battled the miscreants that stayed in the bushes nipping them on the board, the state government established through an Act of Parliament the Udo Ga Chi Security Operations popularly known as Agunechemba.

The Udo Ga Chi meaning Peace Must Reign is not just for the local vigilante groups known as Agunechemba it also involved the eight service commanders that is Police, Army, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA, Immigration,Customs, Deodorant of State Service DSS as well as the Civil Defence Corps. We had operational vehicles distributed to those sister security organizations and we worked together to achieve peace in Anambra state.

The Agunechemba Security Squad is the local vigilante groups and they are made up of the natives and it is only the natives that can identify those strange elements in the communities and with these other security operatives can now come in to take action.

Recall that about eight local government areas had been under siege by gunmen but with the security architecture that was put in place most communities have been liberated and that informed the celebration of New Yam festivals and Ofala festivals in those areas with cultural dance and masquerade displays.

That is what informed the Mass Return in Anambra State last Christmas and New Year seasons. Today people come home to start community projects of all kinds and take ownership of their towns and the camps of these gunmen taken over by security operatives.

But we still hear of attacks in the towns?

Comparatively, crime and criminality have been reduced as against what was obtainable in the past and we have not gotten there yet and we shall continue to push further to get there though there is no perfect society anywhere in the world and the more sophisticated the security architecture is the more challenging crime becomes. This 2026, we are also putting up other forms of security checks and this is not for public consumption and one can only see it happening as they come.