Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Graphic Newspaper, Dayo Thomas, has urged relevant authorities to put in place a special welfare programme for the families of serving policemen in the country.
 
He made the plea during a visit by the Integrity Forum to his office in Lokoja, Kogi State.
 
Led by the forum’s president, Blessing Ogbe, the association lamented the rate at which policemen were being killed, while their families were hunted and attacked by criminals.
  
According to the president, over 50 policemen had been killed in the country in the last year, while many of their families were being attacked daily.
  
“The ongoing armed conflicts, insecurity, lack of state protection and recurring humanitarian crises had further exposed the Nigeria police officers and their families to serious abuse.
  
“One of the victims, one Inspector Oluwasegun Osagbemi, a native of Ponyan in Kogi State, was killed in front of his office in Ibadan, Oyo State, leaving behind a wife and children.
  
You would recall that the family of the immediate elder brother of the deceased who is also a police officer and currently out of the country, Mrs Oluwafunmilayo Esther Ayodele, following alleged threats to her life and that of her children, which was reported to the police and also published on page 10, Saturday Telegraph of 21st December 2019 and page 6 of The Graphic Newspaper of 25th December 2019, she disclosed.