Three men are now cooling their feet in the police net for allegedly stealing Point of Sale machines and wipers of vehicles in the guise of protesting bad governance in Nigeria, PUNCH Metro learnt on Wednesday.
The state Commissioner for Police, Olatunji Disu, disclosed this while fielding questions from newsmen in Port Harcourt.
Disu, who said he carried out an on-the-spot assessment of the protest in various parts of the state, expressed dismay that miscreants had taken over the protest.
He further said the organisers of the genuine protest had lost control of the protesters, saying the police could not fold their hands and allow hoodlums to have a free run.
Disu said, “I give you my word, I’m going to find out what happened here. But, I’m aware that hoodlums have hijacked this protest from them.
“They have a lot of people moving around with them harassing members of the public. About one hour ago, we arrested three people who went around stealing POS machines among the protesters.
“We have thugs; we have people who have been stealing wipers from people’s vehicles. They’ve been trying to burn tyres everywhere and policemen have been going immediately to extinguish them.
“So, these are not protesters, thugs are among them. If thugs are here, maybe, they came with them or something like that. But I give my word, I’m going to investigate and I’ll give you feedback about what I find out.”
He said clearly that the protest assumed a new twist different from what it was set out to achieve originally, pointing out that there are now splinter groups going from one part of the city to the other with ulterior motives.
“The things have changed. It’s different from how they started the protest. They’ve started going from one part of the state, part of the town to another, blocking roads, trying to force people to join them and even they have started threatening people not to open their offices and their shops.
“This has gone beyond a peaceful protest. I am very surprised we got to this stage. You’ll notice we have a lot of women police officers around.
“A lot of my Divisional Police Officers are women police and they’re putting the feminine part of them into this job.
“They try to do policing by consent, getting close to people and they’ve been having wonderful relationships just like you said with them.”
He said they were so comfortable with the protesters and provided water and biscuits for them but all of a sudden, the protest became bigger than the organizers.
“They no longer could control the crowd. Even here, they had a fight among themselves yesterday and they broke into three and went their separate ways, and they started going to town, harassing traders, harassing people, threatening them not to come out otherwise, tomorrow would be tough,” he stated.
The CP declared, “Nobody will close his eyes to that, no lawful police officer will close his eyes to such threats.
“It’s our job to protect lives and property and we’ve made up our minds we are going to do it. We’re going to take decisive action if they take the law into their hands.
“We’re capable of protecting lives and property. It’s our job, and we know how to do it so well. For your information, our sister agencies have joined in properly.”
