By Osahon Osahon
The Commissioner of Police in charge of Edo State Command, Mr. Philip Ogbadu, has cautioned communities along Benin-Auchi highway against conniving with the suspected criminals, particularly the kidnappers.
Ogbadu gave the caution on Thursday, during a meeting initiated with community leaders, youths and other stakeholders along the highway notorious for kidnapping.
The State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki was represented at the meeting by his Deputy, Philip Shaibu.
Recall that youths in Ehor, Uhunmwonde Local Government Area last week, barricaded the road, in protest as of the incessant kidnapping and killings in that axis.
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Addressing the stakeholders at the meeting, the CP called for information to help check the insecurity in the area even as he promised increased police presence in the area.
He said: “We need information from the communities, because to us, it appears that there are some community members that have more information and we have impressed on them to give us information.
“If there is anybody benefitting from it, we want the community to open up and search within so that if there is any deviant benefitting from what is happening, we will know and bring them to book,” he warned.
Edo State government has taken the alarming rate of insecurity along the Benin – Auchi Highway to the communities situated in the route, just as its cautioned them not to cooperate or connive with suspected criminals to continue to perpetuate their kidnapping and other criminal activities.
Speaking at the meeting, Deputy Governor Philip Shaibu disclosed the state government got more information that would complement the security architecture that Governor Godwin Obaseki has already initiated.
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Shaibu said: “We came here for a fact finding mission, we already have a security architecture that the governor is already working to deal with this menace.
“Youths last week protested here and we needed to come down to the community to actually know what the issues are and how to deal with them. We have discovered that the issue of security has to be localised and in localising it, we must hear directly from the people.
“We have the information, we need to understand it deeply and fortunately for us, some of the things we have put in place are some of the solutions they are suggesting to us and we have learnt one or two other things that we needed to add to the security architecture.
“We are good to go and what we have agreed is that we all have to domesticate every aspect of dealing with security.”
