By Olusegun Adeosun
Adeleye Oyebade, Assistant Inspector-General, AIG Zone 11, has said Nigerian policemen have not underestimated their responsibilities in the on-going electoral process.
Oyebade made this declaration, Sunday, during a television programme monitored in Lagos. He was responding to questions on the killing of a young man in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, during last Saturday’s presidential and national assembly elections.
“I want to assure members of the public that the police has not underestimated the task at hand but we should tell ourselves the truth . Everybody should be able to know that winning is not…by arms. Those that are even going to win should be magnanimous while winning and the losers should be gallant ”
“Police did not underestimate the process. This time around you have not heard about any police accidental discharge, all that which people normally complain about. We have trained our people, you can see that policemen are more professional, But the criminals, the thugs, those that are armed, are the problems,” he said.
Oyebade, however, promised that the hoodlums that perpetrated the killing in Oyo state will soon be caught and brought to book.
“We are working on information about those boys. In Ibadan. We have so many hoodlums perpetrating crimes and we will do something about it. We will get them arrested. We will get the hoodlums that perpetrated the acts.”
Commenting on the alleged abduction of a deputy commissioner of Police in Bayelsa, Oyebadae said “we will crosscheck that information. We will find out what really happened. Before you can abduct a Deputy Commissioner of Police, it is a slap. and I doubt that. We will find out. We have our platform and we will keep track if it has happened …We know what to do.”, he said.