BENIN CITY – THE newly posted Commissioner of Police to Edo state, Mr Philip Ogbadu yesterday read the riot act to criminals as he vowed to crush their activities and maintained that his target is to ensure kidnapped victims are rescued within four hours.
Ogbadu stated this when he visited the Edo State Council Secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) where he was received by the leadership of the union led by its Chairman, Sir Rolland Osakue.
He said “In the past five days, you cannot kidnap anybody in this state and keep him or her for four hours, if you keep the person for more than that, we will catch you and that is what we are working towards, you cannot just come and pick somebody as if he is a fowl and if we catch you woe betide you and that is what we are aiming at.
“The bad sides that have been giving us bad names, we are keeping eyes on them; Benin – Auchi road around Ehor, Ahor and other areas we are putting our men on the alert so that whatever happens there, our men will be on ground.”
Continuing, Ogbadu said “We have travelled all the way to Igarra, Ibillo, we have gone to Agenebode, we have gone all the way to Akure road, there is no part of the state that we have not gone to and thank God for the governor we have who is always there in the time of distress, he has established a command and control centre at the government house from which we get information.”
He said that some of the criminals are from other states but that he was cooperating with sister security agencies to curb crime saying “The way they terrorise people in the bushes in some states, they can’t do that here because we are working with the vigilantes so there is synergy both with the military, the SSS, NSCDC, FRSC, the hunters. We share information, the police only coordinate4 as the arrow head because of the spread.
“I want to tell us that some of these people worrying us are not indigenes of this state, some are from Delta, some from Kogi, some from Ondo and other states.”
