Lagos State warns that it will confiscate houses and hotels used as criminal hideouts

LAGOS State government officials have warned that will not hesitate to confiscate houses and hotels used as hideouts for kidnapping and other criminal activities as part of a move to stamp out the growing rate of crime.

 

Like most of Nigeria's 36 states, Lagos is suffering from a growing crime rate with kidnapping, abductions and armed robbery on the rise. Lagos State police commissioner of Fatai Owoseni, who read the riot act after the State Security Council meeting presided over by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, said the government was poised to eradicate the menace of kidnapping and militancy.

 

Mr Owoseni said: “The take away for today after the Security Council meeting is for us to look at all the strategies that we have been employing in tackling the security challenges that we had in the state and to further strategise with the view to sustaining those measures that would put all the criminal elements in check. The Security Council has come out to let our people know emphatically that the state is more poised at tackling all the criminal challenges and making sure that all the criminal elements that are going about will not be allowed any free reign and they will not be given freedom of space to practice any of their criminal acts.

 

“There is no hiding place for criminal elements again and as we get them, they would be made to face the full wrath of the law. In addition to that, the council resolved that any structure or any places of hiding that criminal elements are using, the state will not hesitate, in the interest of the public, to take over those safe havens, structures or houses."

 

He warned commercial motorcyclists, popularly known as Okadas operating on restricted routes, to obey the state’s traffic laws, saying enforcement of the laws is still ongoing. In addition, Mr Owoseni advised criminal elements to turn a new leaf and get themselves meaningfully engaged.