Publishers urge Delta Gov to assent, implement community security corps agency law
The Delta State Online Publishers Forum (DOPF) has called on Governor Sheriff Oborevwori to speedily assent and implement the Delta State Community Security Corps Agency Bill, 2025 already passed by the State House of Assembly.
The bill, a critical security legislation, was passed by the Delta State House of Assembly on Tuesday, July 22, 2025, after due legislative process and third reading.
The bill, sponsored by Hon. (Dr.) Isaac Anwuzia, Chairman of the House Committee on Peace and Security, appears to have been discarded even as insecurity heightens in parts of Delta and other communities across Nigeria.
Worried that the Governor recently signed the Anti-Terrorism Bill into law and left the Delta State Community Security Corps Agency Bill, 2025, DOPF, in a statement on Friday – earlier today, January 16 – signed by its Chairman, Mr. Emmanuel Enebeli, and Secretary, Mr. Shedrack Onitsha, expressed the need for the Governor to urgently assent to the bill and commence its implementation.
The forum said its call had become necessary and was spurred by “a deep sense of responsibility and patriotism” in view of the “growing security concerns in the State, particularly the persistent attacks on farmers by armed herdsmen.”
Referencing several cases of kidnapping for ransom, and other violent crimes that now threaten livelihoods, food security, and public confidence in governance, the DOPF explained that “it is in this context that we respectfully urge Your Excellency to sign into law the Delta State Community Security Corps Agency Law, 2025.”
The bill, which repealed the 2020 version of the law, was deliberately crafted to provide a more robust, structured, and legally grounded framework for community-based policing and grassroots security across the state.
“The intention of the House was clear: to strengthen Delta State’s security architecture by establishing a formal Community Security Corps Agency that can complement conventional security agencies, like the Amotekun in the South-West, improve intelligence gathering, and respond swiftly to local security threats that federal forces alone are overstretched to handle,” DOPF said.
While commending the Governor for assenting to the Delta State Anti-Terrorism and Anti-Cultism (Amendment) Law, 2025, and launching the Delta State Security Trust Fund, the publishers, however, lamented that the Delta State Community Security Corps Agency Law, which provides the operational backbone for effective grassroots security enforcement, has remained unsigned several months after passage.
“This delay raises troubling questions, especially when viewed against the fate of the Delta State Anti-Open Grazing Law, which, despite being enacted in the last dispensation, has largely remained dormant, even as Deltans continue to suffer violent attacks on their farms by marauding herdsmen.
“With reports of terrorist elements being displaced from the North-East following recent international military operations, there is growing fear that criminal networks may seek refuge in relatively softer regions, including parts of the Niger Delta,” DOPF warned, pointing out that signing the bill into law should go hand in hand with the immediate establishment of clear structures for its implementation, including recruitment guidelines, training standards, funding mechanisms, oversight frameworks, and coordination protocols with existing security agencies.
