Police give 10 days ultimatum to cultist, others to surrender arms

Eric Olusesan /Port Harcourt

The Rivers State Police Command has issued a ten-day ultimatum  to anyone in possession of illegal Arms to surrender them to the command or face the wrath of law.

The State Commissioner of Police, CP Effiong Okon, gave the ultimatum while briefing Journalists on the increase of cultism and illegal Arms circulating in the state at the command headquarters in Port Harcourt.

“We are going to open up a window of clemency, that means we will not prosecute anyone who uses this window to surrender their arms and weapons. We have ten days from today, Wednesday, December 7″

He then called on youths, so called cultists, to leave the different forest they are living in right now and return to the main society. 

“We are giving ten days window of clemency for them to come out and surrender their arms and within this period we will not prosecute them. But after ten days, we shall go after them, investigate and make them face the Laws of the land. We will not sit back and allow lives to be lost, or allow security to be Jeopardize , if we do that we would have failed in accomplishing our mandate and therefore conceited efforts have been made to take effective actions, that from today we will clap down on cult activities across the state”.

Police boss further lamented the state has witnessed situations where firearms are brazenly displayed on the streets of our towns, saying that abnormal won’t be allowed as Nigeria is not a lawless country, neither is Rivers State a lawless State. 

He said “Arms are prohibited and must not be in the hands of unauthorized persons, if that happens, the consequences will be far too reaching and as part of our efforts to curb this arm, we are raiding every location that we have information that arms have been stored. It is going to be a Mop up of operations”, he noted.

CP Effiong Okon also noted that the command will continue with mopping-up of arms, which the command have begun in Bodo community in Gokana Local Government Area.

“We have started with, with Bodo in Gokana Local govt and as we speak that operations is ongoing and as far as this operations is concerned we would respect the rights of every Nigerian, by insisting on the rules of engagement, let me remind us that this operations has nothing to do with politics or religion, the tasks is simply to eradicate our society of arm bearing miscreants who daily are terminating the lives of innocent ones, this operations is going to be a continuous one until the desired result is achieved to rid our communities of prohibited firearms”.

“If these arms are not curtailed could threaten the peaceful conduct of 2023 elections because those arms bearing youths could easily becomes thugs for politicians but says they we will not fold their hands and allow that to happen.

CP Effiong Okon equally disclosed plans to organize workshop for youth leaders in the state to curtail the display of arms and achieve a peaceful election in 2023.

The Police  boss added that in the next 72 hours they will commence stop and search activities within Port Harcourt and its environ to enable them raid the city of Arms.