As Governor of Anambra State (2014 – 2022), Obiano did a lot of tangible, measurable developmental legacies. Anyone living on God’s breath should listen through “100+ Things that Obiano Did”. As the legendary Zik would say, History Will Vindicate the Just. For this piece of good wish on his birthday, I focus on SECURITY. From day one, Obiano took on Anambra’s public safety and pinpointedly defined it as an adaptive challenge, which deserved a well thought-out adaptive response. Obiano’s crime fighting blueprint was developed from a Security Summit anchored by an Israeli security expert. He operated a somewhat complex manual authentic for Anambra State. The kernel is that the State was carved into crime sectors and special bespoke squads created that focused the sectors.
Here was the technique. Operation Kpochapu I & II brought all security agencies – The Police, The Army, The Navy, DSS, The Civil Defence, The Immigration Services, The Correctional Services, The Drug Law Enforcement Agency and the Road Safety – under one central command as Joint Task Force, optimizing these Agencies as crime nets. This meant that no crime of any character escaped the JTF. There was Operation Udoka, for instance, that took up Upper Iweka; There was also the Metro Police that focused on Awka Capital Area with special teams and dedicated vehicles covering the students areas and the municipal red districts. Smart Vehicles were spread at strategic locations all over the State complete with full option communication gadets and mobile base stations.
Forward Operational Bases (FOB) were created all over Anambra State and manned by joint teams that locked down flash points within areas of perennial security challenges and choked up easy criminal exit. Obiano created an Operational Permanent Camp for the JTF, that is, a central location from which FOBs were fed with a replenishment of combatant booths-on-ground security personnel. One FOB was at Otuocha Stadium.
Generally, State Governments and security agencies in different states carry high number of routine duty personnel as deadweight in their commands. But Obiano filled the gap year in, year out with cycles of highly tactical visiting mobile police units that kept quality of combatant ground men solid throughout. For eight years, this tactic impacted on the State’s security budget. But the game was worth the candles burnt.
There were special areas manned by Army Artillery and the Navy, for reasons that threw in cuts in illegal arms and armunition supplies into the crime fighting matrix. People did not know this silent but successful Obiano tactic in managing his crime environment. He gave a bloody nose to booming business of illicit arm and armunition supplies.
A consciousness for the Anambra person in the Diaspora was critical for Obiano in all his eight years as Governor. By Diaspora, I mean Anambra State indigenes living outside Anambra.
No festive or special season that there were no helicopter patrols as a component of a necessary Show-of-Force with real-time, air-to-ground communication.
*Non-Conventional Non-kinetics*
Besides the foregoing conventional kinetics, an important element in Obiano’s security template is non-conventional non-kinetics. Obiano’s non-kinetics template was rich in emulable networks set in the manual for the procurement of vital intels. Traders Associations, The Keke Operators, Women Groups, The Community Leaders, Leaders of Massive Political Followings, Vigilantes, The Youth Volunteers for “Traffic Control”, were central. And more insightfully, the Farmers/Herders Committee was specially strategic and explains why anyone would scratch their brains to recall any one time there were fulani kidnap incident until about Obiano’s exit as Governor. The Committee offered early alert of unwanted entries. These again impacted on the State’s security budget. But the game was worth the candles burnt.
Obiano’s funding of crime combating follows the operational template. Seven main heads can be broadly categorized as regular expenditure flows viz, in support of operation, logistics and personnel morale, daily, weekly and monthly, fixated to result, single-minded on agency loyalty; and oustandingly creative, changing with crime’s changing conventions.
From first day to exit, three petrol stations, for instance, one for Nnewi and environs; one for Onitsha and environs and the other for Awka and environs were dedicated to tanking all security operational vehicles, Armoured Personnel Carriers and bikes state-wide thrice weekly; plus diesel for naval boats patrolling the waterways. Logistics and morale supports were efficiently administered weekly. Allowances for all operational personnel were promptly paid at every month-end. No holiday in this role for eight years! The Agencies were happily working.
Seven broad expenditures came non-regular principally in support of special forces on assignments specific to Anambra and the co-operation of strategic institutions.
*Then The Vision of Boston*
Phototechnology is helping to break anonymity in the public space where crime hides in unknown identity. I was on Governor Obiano’s entourage to Boston, USA shopping for mobile, 360-degrees revolving aerial security cameras as his next phase scheme against crime. A pilot was started in Awka and Upper Iweka, Onitsha that would have seen the State completely wired on three overlapping levels of coverage with Control Rooms. This security camera scheme is just occurring to some States now. Obiano’s thought then was that brazen crimes that escaped the chokes on ground would sure be caught in the aerial cameras. Obiano’s philosophy then was that 21st Century technology was available, far ahead of crime. It only needed a big-picture mind to deploy. Obiano was a big-picture mind in his handling of security in Anambra State.
Please do Obiano a birthday favour. Play back the widely broadcast clips of the launch of Operation Kpochapu II at Ekwueme Square Awka. The sea of operational vehicles and bikes tailor-made for each of the nine security agencies that formed the pillars of Anambra security architecture is, to say the least, breathtaking.
The Police Inspector-General’s speech at that event came deep from his heart. There is probably no better birthday gift than to raise Obiano’s hand for holding crime firmly by the jugular during his time, unleashing the emergence of a highly competitive, socially stable state, magneting third-party and Diaspora money back home. Anambra State bubbled. Crime fled from extreme choke and discomfort releasing space for a 24-hour economy. At some point when the rest of the country passed through depression, Anambra State’s GDP rather grew by 1%. Go and verify. In all of Obiano’s eight years as Governor, no family held a cultural ceremony outside the State on account of unsafe homeland. None.
Here is raising a toast to Chief Obiano as he turns 69. Your works, despite desperate machinations to keep them away, still speak silently in the minds of broad minded ndị Anambra.
- Nwokoye, who wrote in from Ibobo Drive, Amawbia, pays tribute to former Anambra State governor, Chief Willie Mmaduaburochukwu Obiano as he turns 69 today.
