FALSE KIDNAPPING ALARM LANDS DELTA COMMISSIONER IN POLICE NET

Delta state Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan’s Commissioner for Transport, Hon. Ben Igbakpa, was on Tuesday arrested following a false alarm raised by a traffic offender in Asaba, the state capital.

Although, the Commissioner denied being arrested by men of the state police command, he was among those sandwiched to the police station in their Hilux van at the Agbofure Transport Company’s Park.

The Commissioner said he only insisted on going to the station with some of the traffic officials attached to his ministry that were arrested by the police.

He said, “I told the police that the Governor has never abandoned me and as such, I cannot abandon those working with me. They (police) said I should come with them in my car but I said no, that I was going to use their own vehicle. I insisted on going with them in their vehicle because anything could have happened since an alarm about attempted kidnapping had been raised. My driver drove behind us to the station. I was not arrested neither was I manhandled.”

Trouble started, the Nigerian Compass gathered, when a private vehicle operator with registration number AS 978 NSH contravened traffic rules in his bid to hurriedly get into the premises of a transport company where he intended to board a vehicle to his base.

But instead for the driver of the private car to obey the officials of the traffic control unit of the Ministry who caught him and flagged him down, he sped into the premises of the Agbofure Transport Company, shouting that “Kidnappers! Kidnappers!! Kidnappers!!!”

The alarm attracted the management of the company who quickly alerted the police to come rescue the situation. The heated argument that ensued thereafter forced the police to arrest the ministry officials.

Amidst the chaos, an official of the ministry also put a call across to the Commissioner who raced to the troubled spot and insisted that he would not allow the police to arrest his men or in the alternative have him arrested with them.

“When the commissioner arrived, the police were about taking “the traffic boys away but the commissioner did not allow them and the whole place became so rowdy. My brother, there was fight here this morning between these boys (traffic officials) and those garage boys. They said the traffic officials pursued one of their customers into the compound and wanted to take him away. So they reacted by calling the police and if not for the police, it would have be a different story,” an eyewitness said.

Although, the traffic violator is now on the run, Igbakpa said the vehicle, a navy blue Primera Nissan, has been impounded, even as the police claimed that the Governor’s Commissioner was among those arrested.

Igbakpa reiterated that no traffic offender would be allowed to escape the wrath of the law no matter how highly placed, following the structure his ministry had put in place to check such offences.

Source: Compass