4th September, 2014
Kazeem Ugbodaga
Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola has ordered the Lagos State Police Command to flush out members of various cult groups in Lagos that have been killing and maiming innocent residents across the state.
The governor’s order was echoed by the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Office of Operations, Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Emmanuel Ngwu at the end of the State Security Council meeting at the State House, Marina, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.
He said the meeting also discussed the activities of cultists and street gangs in the state, adding that the governor has given directives concerning them and that the police, in collaboration with other security agencies, would implement the directives to the letter.
“We are not going to fold our arms and watch cult members killing and maiming innocent and law-abiding Lagosians. So, we are moving in, in conjunction with every other security agency in Lagos State; we are going after them, either they change or we arrest them and prosecute them in court. That is the directive,” he said.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police also advised commercial motorcycle operators (Okada riders) in the state to restrict their operations to the roads approved for them in the Lagos State Road Traffic Law, warning that the police would continue to enforce the law as long as they continue to ply roads not approved by the law.
“Let us obey a simple law. Lagos State Government has been so magnanimous, they never banned Okada. They restricted Okada on some routes; let Okada riders take only those routes they are allowed to take and stop coming on the expressway and the routes on which they are restricted. If they continue to go on the routes they are prohibited, police will continue to clamp down on them”, he said.
He also assured Lagosians that the police would work in collaboration with other security agencies in the state to reduce crime and criminality to the barest minimum during the “EMBER” months comprising September, October, November and December.
Ngwu noted that the period is not new to the police in the state and assured of the readiness of the Command and other security agencies to curtail crime in the State during the months leading to the Christmas and New Year festivities.
“If you are not new in Lagos you will understand that each time the ‘EMBER’ months arrive security agencies in Lagos begin to be proactive. This is because if you look at the population of Lagos you will see the need for the police and the armed forces that are helping the police to do their job and every other security agency to be ready,” he said.
On the issue of the use of siren, Ngwu recalled that the former Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar Manko, who is currently the AIG in charge of Zone 2, Onikan, Lagos, has given the mandate that every person who is not authorised to use siren must now stop using it adding, “if you are caught, you face the law. That is the definite instruction.”