..As four nursing mothers cry
out for help
The Police in a joint operation with the military and Department of State Services (DSS) arrested the Commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria Dickson Akor and 49 other members of the outfit, with a promise to arrest more operators of unathourised security outfits in the country.
The Police in a joint operation with the military and Department of State Services (DSS) arrested the Commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria Dickson Akor and 49 other members of the outfit, with a promise to arrest more operators of unathourised security outfits in the country.
Meanwhile, four nursing mothers,
among the 49 others, have cried out that their babies and families were yet to
be notified of their whereabouts since they were taken in by the police on
Tuesday morning.
The police leadership had
recently noted that activities of some illegal security outfits were
constituting different kinds of threat to national security, hence it resolved
to dismantle them nationwide.
Parading Akor and 49 others,
Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood said a joint operation with the
military and operatives of the Department of State Services arrested the
suspects on Tuesday in an operation that was intended to dismantle illegal and
unlawful security outfits throughout the country “constituting national
security threat and threat to the protection of lives and property”.
Moshood said the joint operation would
be replicated nationwide to arrest other such illegal outfits proscribed by a
Federal Government Gazette in 2013 such as the Nigeria Maritime Security
Agency, Nigeria Merchant Navy Petroleum Security and Safety and Peace Corps of
Nigeria and other quasi illegal security outfits.
He
recalled that recruitment camps opened by the Peace Corps were closed down but
other illegal activities of the corps have continued, leading to the operation
to clamp down on them to forestall further security threat it poses to the
nation.
Flanked
by the representative of the Army Lt. Col. A Sani of the Army Garrison and a
representative of the DSS, Moshood explained that Akor registered Peace Corp of
Nigeria as a Non-Governmental Organisation by the Corporate Affairs Commission
before brazenly diverting from the original mandate, “opened illegal training
camps in some states of the country, where thousands of youths and other
persons without proper background check and screening are receiving converts
military training.
“During
preliminary investigation, into the activities of the Peace Corps, it was
discovered that they were extorting money from unwary youths throughout the
country under the guise of recruitment”, Moshood said.
He
maintained that the Peace Corps has turned itself into a security outfit
without authorisation and establishment by the Federal Government of Nigeria.
The
police further enumerated the offences of the corps to include wearing uniforms
without the legal authority to do so; posting their personnel on guard duties,
using ranks insignia, badges of ranks with semblance of that of the Police,
Military and other paramilitary organisations.
But
when given the opportunity to say something, the leader of the group, Akor
wasted no time in explaining that the money received from the members of his
NGO is used to process their uniforms and other paraphernalia of office, but
they do not engage in security operations or guards.
Akor,
who was visibly shaken by the arrest, said many of his members were tortured by
the operatives who ransacked his office, carting away every available machine,
including handsets and money.
Akor
particularly said one of his ‘officers’ was badly brutalised and is almost
dying in an Abuja hospital, saying the outfit is not illegal as it provides the
platform for Nigerian youths to be useful to their society, noting that the
corps has a mandate within which it operates.
The
Guardian gathered that one of the corp members who resisted arrest was badly
beaten and is currently receiving treatment at the National Hospital, with
stitched injuries he sustained in the head.
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