At a recent forum, Force PRO says the FG will no longer tolerate 'accidental discharge' as an excuse for murder anymore from the black-uniformed men of the Force.
In a not-too-distant past, it was common to hear of extra-judicial murders by men of the Police Force for reasons inconsequential chief of which is that it was an "accidental discharge." If the words of the Force PRO is anything to go by, that may no longer be a tenable excuse for murder anymore.
Speaking at at a Forum of Spokespersons of Security and Response Agencies (FOSSRA) organised by I-Nigerian Initiative, the PRO Acting CP Emmanuel Ojukwu gave the warning while dogmatically maintaining that there is no such thing as 'accidental discharge'.
According to him, "“There is nothing like ‘accidental discharge’,” he said. “Every gun has a safety mode. We (will) deal with any police officer that says that and charge him or her for murder. We will not spare such a person.
Acting CP Emmanuel Ojukwu
When a gun is fired it must have been cocked; and before you cock, you must have the intention to fire it."
“So if anyone has intention to fire, and he wounds somebody, we will not spare him because we are self-cleansing, we don’t take nonsense; bad eggs don’t survive here and so we throw them out."
Speaking further, Ojukwu stated that the Police had more widows and orphans than any other public establishment in the country. He said, " we have more widows and orphans in the Police than anywhere else and we are not even recognized or compensated."
On the issue of security, he said the Force had trained lots of offiers called the Vigilante Support Officers to help coordinate vigilante groups on how to operate within communities. This initiative, regarded as informal policing, is important for many Nigerian communities because these officers have local roots and thus know and are able to relate with the communities better than the conventional system of policing.