Homeboys & Hope: Gov. Uzodimma’s peace & security strides shared at UN conference

On Monday, March 6, 2024, during a highly successful United Nations (UN) dialogue on “The Africa We Want and the United Nations We Need,” the Imo State experience in pursuit of peace and security was brought centre stage by Dr. Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji.

Using Governor Uzodimma’s successes through the Ministry of Homeland Security and Vigilante Affairs as a case study, Ugorji, who was the pioneer Commissioner for the ministry, made enlightening contributions to discussions within the “Peace, Security and Defense” session of the conference.

The conference, which was hosted by the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy, and Development (SCDDD) and the US based Stimson Center, attracted government representatives, prominent civil society groups and multilateral agencies from Africa and other parts of world, including the UN, the African Union, and the ECOWAS.

During his presentation, Ugorji posited that there needs to be a balance or mix of what he referred to as “hard power and soft power” in mitigating security challenges.

“Around 2019 and into 2020, Governor Hope Uzodimma faced a politically motivated, designed and vigorous multi-prong attack on the security and safety of life and property in the state.

“Using a combination of non-state actors and false flag operations, the governor’s formidable political adversaries, had the political to make the state ‘ungovernable,’ with an objective to force the declaration of a state-of- emergency in the state by the federal government,” Ugorji said.

The former Commissioner shared that the state government enabled the security agencies to use minimal hard power to arrest the violent aspects of the security challenges.

“Once the environment was made sufficiently calm, then the state stepped up the use of soft power in areas of dialogues, town hall meetings, skills acquisition for the youth and human capital development in general.

“We recognized that criminal elements and separatist activists recruited from the pool of our young people, especially our young men.

“So we set out to also recruit and train Youth Peace Advocates in every community, first to provide an alternative narrative to the separatist propaganda, second to empower young people to take proactive ownership of their own security and safety in their communities, and third, to deny the criminal elements easy access to the recruitment of our youngsters.”

Gender inclusivity was a reiterated theme at the conference.

Ugorji shared that the state got women, as a constituency, involved in security matters by linking up with the highly regarded Women August Meeting phenomenon.

Hope’s Angels, a sister initiative to the Youth Peace Advocates, was also inaugurated, with emphasis on having women as active contributors at the table where security issues are discussed and security formations planned.

Ugorji also discussed Imo State’s approach to faith-based security challenges by the establishment of an Interfaith Security Advisory and Advocacy Council (ISAAC).

Special outreach to traditional rulers, who are the chairperson of security councils in their various autonomous communities, was another important aspect of the Imo State case study, as discussed by the pioneer Commissioner.

“Peace is not just the absence of war,” Ugorji opined. “Peace must include the fair administration of justice, the equitable distribution of our common patrimony, and the general social, economic and cultural well-being of our peoples on the continent,” he said.

The writer, Prince Ogu, is the President of RAPNEC (Road Accidents Prevention Network) and Representative of the UN DECADE OF ACTION PROJECT TEAM in Nigeria. He writes as a participant in the conference.