The Police in Lagos Wednesday assured Lagosians that they would work in collaboration with other security agencies to reduce crime and criminality to the barest minimum during the “EMBER” months comprising September, October, November and December.
Fielding questions from newsmen after the weekly State Security Council meeting presided over by Governor Babatunde Fashola at the Lagos House, Marina, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Office of Operations, Lagos State Police Command, Mr. Emmanuel Ngwu, said the police are ready and would ensure that Lagosians sleep with their two eyes closed during the period.
Noting that the period is not new to the police in the state, Ngwu assured of the readiness of the Command and other security agencies to curtail crime during the months leading to the Christmas and New Year festivities, adding that the police always step up the alertness level as the period approaches.
“If you are not new in Lagos you will recognise 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 agencies to be ready,” Ngwu said.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police advised commercial motorcycle (Okada) riders in the state to restrict their operations to the roads approved for them in the Lagos State Road Traffic Law warning that his men 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.
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 an AIG, has given the mandate that every person who is not authorised to use siren must stop using it adding, “If you are caught, you face the law. That is the definite instruction.”
He said the meeting also discussed the activities of cultists and street gangs in the state, adding that Fashola has given directives concerning them and that the police, in collaboration with other security agencies, would implement the directives to the letter.
He declared, “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 catch them, arrest them and prosecute them in court. That is the directive.”
Ngwu was accompanied at the press briefing by other members of the Security Council including the Commanding Officer, 9 Brigade, Nigerian Army, Ikeja, Brigadier-General Dalubo; Commander NNS Beecroft, Commodore Overiseri Emmanuel Uwadiae; Director, State Security Service, Mr. Ben Olaiyi; Commander, Air Force Base 435 BSG, Ikeja, Air Commodore A.L. Osanyintolu, and Special Adviser to the Governor on Security, Major Tunde Panox (rtd).
