• HURIWA asks IGP to investigate unprofessional conduct of officers
Imo State Police Command has explained how it arrested a 23-year-old girl that allegedly shot his boyfriend, a police officer, in Ezinihitte Mbaise Local Council of the state.
The command’s Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Henry Okoye, in a statement, on Friday, said that about 6.32pm, some policemen heard a loud gunshot at the Ezinihitte Mbaise Area Command’s Barracks, precisely in the room of Corporal Cosmas Ugwu, and proceeded to the scene, only to find Ugwu in a pool of blood, arising from the bullet injuries on his chest region.
According to him, the officer was taken to a nearby medical facility, Evergreen Hospital, where the doctor pronounced him dead, with his body deposited at the morgue for preservation.
“As a result, the suspected, Amanda Uchechi Ugo, who hails from Umumbiri, Ahiazu Mbaise Local Council, was arrested at the crime scene with a pistol. On interrogation, the suspect admitted shooting the deceased after an altercation.”
Meanwhile, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kayode Egbetokun to wake up from slumber, deploy anonymously dressed armed police spies to investigate unprofessional conducts and crimes by police officers in Imo State to ensure that corrupt minded officers and operatives are wedded out.
HURIWA expressed utter shock, consternation and disappointment that Imo State Police Command has now reached a new low with police officers now charging between N40,000 to N100, 000 before they can respond to distress calls from residents who encounter societal undesirable elements.
HURIWA also said it would petition the National Assembly Public Complaints Committee to investigate the scams going on within the ranks and files of the Imo State Police Command just as it wondered why the National Human Rights Commission has failed in its core mandate to enforce human rights in Nigeria with specific concern about the South East of Nigeria where citizens face arbitrary arrests, detention, extortion and extrajudicial execution by the police.
Besides, HURIWA said the police traffic division in Imo State Police Command has now set up operational base in front of the state command headquarters near the federal prisons in Owerri Imo State where a top flight officer of the police sends out junior police operatives to arrest oncoming unsuspecting members of the driving public in private automobiles indiscriminately, private owners of choice vehicles under the guise that they beat traffic light just so the so-called defaulting car owners who are mostly returnees from outside of South East who are home for the Yuletide and virtually all those arrested are extorted between N2,000 to N20,000.
“If the arrested car owner resists the attempt to make him/her part with the bribes to the police, they are immediately taken to the police station.
In a media release, the frontline civil society organisation stated that its National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, who witnessed the ordeals of some vehicle owners, made several calls to the Imo State Police Commissioner on a phone contact provided directly by the Force Public Relations Officer from Abuja who when told of what was happening in Owerri, apologised and said he was in a noisy environment and so couldn’t call so he sent a phone line, asking that Onwubiko initiate a call to the Imo State police head.
Onwubiko disclosed that several calls made to the line provided wasn’t connecting. A retired director in the police service commission who is on vacation in Owerri was reached by HURIWA and he provided the phone line of the Imo State Police Command but frantic efforts made to call this line was fruitless.
The rights group noted that aside police officers routinely go around in police operational vehicles harassing young men driving exotic cars under the guise that they are internet fraudsters, the police harassed and arbitrarily arrested youngster to cough out between N100, 000 to N500, 000 or the person will end up being framed up for a crime he knows nothing about.
Onwubiko, therefore, called on the police IGP Kayode Egbetokun to wake up from slumber, deploy anonymously dressed armed police spies to investigate these ongoing crimes by the police and ensure that corrupt minded police officers and operatives are wedded out of the police.
