4th August, 2015
Kazeem Ugbodaga
The Lagos Joint Security Forces have arrested 595 suspected criminals, cultists and street hawkers in the Lagos metropolis in the last one month.
Lagos Commissioner for Police, Fatai Owoseni disclosed this on Tuesday evening at the end of the State Security Council meeting chaired by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode at the State House, Ikeja, Lagos, Southwest Nigeria.
Owoseni said the meeting looked at the security and crime situation in the past one month as well as the menace of street trading, land-grabbers, and all other security issues in the state within the last one month.
“We’ve looked at the areas where we are winning, the areas where we need to step up our activities and one of those areas we looked at critically is the issue of the guys that rob on the highway in traffic gridlock. We have taken a decision to do all what we can do to step all activities, first, to decongest the traffic gridlock, because if we do that, once traffic moves, we are going to take the street traders and hawkers off the road,” he said.
According to him, “once we decongest, we would also reduce the incidence of people robbing motorists on the road and of course the response time to distress call will be improved upon. Those are the things we looked at.
“The meeting also took the decision that we continued our onslaught against criminals, especially the land grabbers to make sure that they are brought to justice once they are arrested, diligent investigation and prosecution carried out, to show examples to others.”
Owoseni said the meeting further looked at the menace of cultists, as lots of efforts had been made within the last one month jointly by security agencies to clamp down on these cultists, adding that the security forces wanted to sustain the rate they carried out raid at the black spots within the metropolis.
He said the security forces wnted to make sure that the issue of gangsterism and cultism were completely wiped out in the state as the security agencies within the past one month actually raided some of these spots.
“About 595 suspects were arrested during the raids and close to 400 have been prosecuted and we have convicted of about 332. We would not relent, we would continue on that onslaught to raid black spots to get rid of street hawking and people who perpetrate crime in the state.
“We’ve been all out to make sure that we enforce those laws to get them off the roads where they are not supposed to be. We are not just doing that, we are also inviting the various Okada riders associations to let them know that everybody needs to obey the law and that when laws are made, they are not just made for the fun of it, but to be enforced and jointly with their cooperation,” he said.