The Anambra Police Command has accused various communities in the state for shielding criminals attacking, killing and maiming innocent people.
This accusation was made by the State Commissioner of Police, CP Echeng E. Echeng while briefing journalists on the murder of Anambra state lawmaker Hon. Okechukwu Okoye and his aide, Cyril Chiegboka.
He said the problem in the state is the conspiracy of silence among the communities, when nobody wants to say anything.
According to him, people know those killing and kidnapping in the communities, but are not ready to talk instead they are “mystifying them with tag unknown gunmen”, when they are known by the various communities.
“Some of us have come out to tag these people unknown gunmen, while in actual sense they are known. We are trying to mystify something that is not just there. It is time we go into demystifying the tag unknown gunmen. They are not spirits; they are our brothers; they live with us in our communities . That is the obvious truth.”
“We know who are these people. The problem the state security have is total conspiracy of silence; when nobody sees something; nobody says something and nobody hears something. Security is collective, everybody has a battle. Crimes are localised, the crimes are committed in our communities and we should be able to say this is what is happening in our communities.
“We are glorifying people that we know and tag them unknown gunmen. We know them and we have actually arrested some of them and they are human beings,” he said.
He also said that part of the security problem in the state is that the state is bothered by neighbouring states and it is easy to move in and out.
Echeng also said that the police and other security agencies in the state were trying to checkmate the cross border crimes.
“From this night , you are going to hear something because we cannot continue with this. We are taking the fight to them and we believe we will win the battle,” he said
