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By Emmanuel Ovundah
The Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Police in charge of Zone 16, Rivers and Bayelsa States, Mr. Benjamin Okolo has warned men of the Nigeria Police against extortion of innocent citizens at check points.
AIG Okolo gave the warning in Port Harcourt while on a familiarization visit to the Rivers State Police Command on Tuesday.
Okolo also warned that human rights abuse such as intimidation and harassment of innocent citizens would henceforth not be tolerated from overzealous officers in the zone under his watch.
The zone 16 Police Boss also urged the officers to always uphold public trust and work in synergy with sister agencies in intelligence sharing and fight against crime and criminality in the zone and other critical areas.
He tasked the Operatives of Rivers Command to continuously promote safety in their various divisions and formation, warned that any officers caught extorting civilians at checkpoints will be dealt with in accordance with the law. He ordered that Police checkpoints should only be used to combat crimes and not for extortion.
He said, “I mentioned earlier that some of us are not behaving well and because of those we need to remind ourselves that acts of harassment and overzealous, intimidation, incivility to members of the public, to mention a few would not be tolerated moving forward.
“We need to be mindful of the usefulness and effectiveness of our checkpoints, we will ensure that those checkpoints are not for extortion purposes, and the essence of checkpoints is to help us combat crime.
“This would be emphasized and we will ensure that we enforce to the extent that those who are remaining recalcitrant will be brought to book.
“Okolo used the medium to applaud the CP Nwonyi Emeka’s led Rivers Police Command for its numerous achievements within a very short period in office and advised them not to rest on their oars.
“The Inspector General (IG) is not unmindful of your successes and achievements, please keep it up.
“This command is performing very well, you don’t need to pinch an ear of ripe corn to know if it’s ripened, on face value I have seen this command to be very neat, secondly the officers turned out very neatly, and it’s commendable. I want to commend your resilience.
”He however, vowed not to let the bad eggs in the zone have their way, emphasizing that officers should uphold the dignity of human rights.
“We may have one or two people, three, four, a few that have sworn that Nigeria Police Force will always be portrayed in bad light, we will not allow that, the IG says and I convey his message to you please uphold the dignity of human rights, ensure that you work within the confines of the rules.
“The new strategy of the IG is aimed at achieving operational successes and realigning public trust, we will not have the trust of the members of the public if we mistreat them. So let us treat people with dignity so we don’t lose public trust.
”Earlier, the Commissioner of Police, Rivers State, Emeka Nwonyi thanked the AIG for the visit, noted that the command was lacking basic riot fighting equipment.
He said: “The command is also faced with a lot of challenges but not limited to these, shortage of arms and ammunition, shortage of anti-riot equipment such as smoke cartridges, smoke grenades, ballistic helmets, riot gunners, smoke pistols. That of armored personnel carriers (APCs), insufficient number of gunboats, and marine police equipment.
“Inadequate number of patrol vehicles, shortage of barrack accommodation for men and women of the command, given the above, may I respectfully plead with you sir, the Assistant Inspector General of Police zone 16 to kindly look into some of our challenges facing the command.”
