In my community, Okpella, for instance, restiveness & insecurity can be tackled through the following 3-pronged measures:
1. Eliminate that obnoxious community revenue ticketing as a means of youth livelihood. Livelihood & Empowerment through revenue ticketing & suppression is the food that fuels cultism and violence in Okpella. Remove this ticketing, they would no longer have anything to fight or kill one another for. Then cultism would become unattractive.
2. Conduct a Cultism Renunciation & Amnesty Program for the members of the various cults to renounce their membership and submit their weapons. This should be done by the tripartite arrangement of Government, Religious Leaders & the Security Agencies. A skills acquisition program should be put in place for renuncees to acquire requisite skills to live productive lives.
3. Redirect the Community Reward & Reprimand System (CRRS). When the younger ones notice that only well-behaved community graduates are being gainfully employed, that only decent artisans with requisite skills are being patronized, and that only these productive segments of the community are the ones making economic progress, in contrast to the unproductive thugs and hooligans, there is every likelihood that they will rethink and key-in into the new deal. They should also be made to come to terms with the reality that thuggery and violence is a key to only one destination: PRISON! However, when these youths notice that the decent graduates and artisans are jobless and poor while the unproductive thugs and entrepreneurs of violence are being patronized and are the ones making economic progress, they are primed to accept and embrace cultism and violence as the directive principle of life policy. This is what is presently playing out in Okpella, and perhaps, many other communities in our beloved state.
