Southeast Governors Forum Move Meetings To Abuja, Elect Hope Uzodimma As Chairman

There is an indication that the Southeast Governors’ Forum has relocated its meeting to Abuja, the nation’s capital.

This is just as Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State State has been elected as the Chairman of Southeast Governors’ Forum. Uzodimma was unanimously endorsed at a meeting of the forum attended by all the governors from the zone in Abuja on Thursday. According to BBC News Igbo, the other governors that were present in the meeting included Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State; Governor Alex Otti of Abia State; Governor Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi State and Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State.

This is the first time since the existence of the forum that the governors would relocate from the headquarters of the forum in Enugu to meet. This, it was gathered, was not unconnected with the security situation in the South-East.

Southeast had been a hotbed of insecurity in the better part of the last two years, following increased agitations that resulted from the marginalization of the South-East by the federal government, particularly during the just-ended administration of General Muhammadu Buhari. It could be recalled that the forum, under the chairmanship of then Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State, had launched regional security outfit, known as Ebubeagu, with Gen. Umahi (rtd) as its coordinator. But, due to lack of funding, the outfit did not see the light of the day, even as insecurity worsened in the region in the last two years