CROSS RIVER STATE AS TOURISM HEAVEN CAN’T ACCOMMODATE INSECURTY - ATTORNEY GENERAL

The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice Mr. Leo Aggrey has said that the State cannot afford to accommodate insecurity which he described as hydra-headed and an arch enemy of tourism.

The State’s Chief Law Officer, Mr. Leo Aggrey stated this during a recent familiarization meeting with the top hierarchy of the Cross River State Police Command at the Police Officers’ Mess, Moore Road, Calabar.

Mr. Aggrey said that since the State has assumed a pride of place in the tourism map of the world all hands must be on deck to sanitise it of all known or semblance of insecurity; stressing that the peace loving posture and culture that was internationally acknowledged must be guided jealously.

He told the officers, “We must work as a team to rid the State of all alien traits and ills such as inter-communal conflicts, Robbery, Cultism, Ritual killings, Bloodletting, Pick-pocketing. Gangsterism, Thuggery and other criminal and clandestine activities which have come but to rubbish and smear the age long amiable identity as peace loving people”.

The Attorney General hinted the State Police top brass that one of the cardinal objectives of the administration under His Excellency, Senator Liyel Imoke was to ensure unflinching preservation and protection of the citizens’ rights; adding that incidents of fundamental rights abuses which have bedeviled our socio-political sector must be shown the way out.

The Chief Law Officer, Mr. Aggrey lamented the incidents of brutalization and torture of inmates of police cells in the process of extracting confessional statements among others describing such acts as sad, gory and breach of fundamental rights of the citizenry.

Mr. Aggrey implored the Commissioner of Police to double the strength of policemen at known points to minimise the scourge of robbery between Nko and Oyedama and the spate of car snatching now prevalent in the Calabar metropolis as well as double security around the Odukpani junction on the Calabar – Ikom/Ogoja highway.

He advised the Police to respect their jurisdictional limitations as provided by the law and to dissociate themselves from veering into land boundary disputes, debt recovery and similar cases which are civil in nature.

He frowned at situations where the police hold “innocent citizens as bait for fleeing criminals” and posited that where such conducts of the police in farming out crimes from nothing generates litigations like unlawful arrest and detention and fundamental rights abuse proceedings, the Ministry of Justice may decline legal representation to the police save and except they turn a new leaf.

The Attorney General promised that he shall upon the coming on board of elected Local Government Councils impress on His Excellency, Governor Imoke to demand that Councils make monthly votes to the Police to help them check criminal activities within their areas.

In order to enhance justice and decongest the prisons as most inmates are Awaiting Trial Victims, the Attorney General sought the posting of officers not below the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) to the headquarters and the Zonal Offices at Akamkpa, Ikom and Ogoja as liaison officers for quicker “dispensation of justice vide remittance of files for DPP’s advice and prosecution where need be”.

Responding a Deputy Commissioner of Police who stood in for Commissioner of Police Alhaji Danlami Yar’dua thanked Mr. Leo Aggrey for convening the meeting and promised to strengthen the existing bond between the Office of the Attorney General of the State and the Police in particular and the lively rapport with the State Government. 

Steve Edem
Information Officer
for: Attorney General & Commissioner for Justice
July 3, 2007