By Saidu Idris
365Daily – The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Graphic Newspaper, Dayo Thomas, has urged the relevant authorities to put in place a special welfare programme for the families of serving policemen in the country.
He made this plea during an advocacy visit by the Integrity Forum to his office in Lokoja, Kogi State.
Led by its President, Blessing Ogbe, the association lamented the rate at which policemen are being violently killed and their families hunted and attacked by criminals.
According to the President, over 50 Policemen have been killed in the country in the last one year while the families of many of the officers are being attacked daily.
It added that the ongoing armed conflict, insecurity, lack of state protection, and recurring humanitarian crises had further exposed Nigeria Police officers and their family to serious abuse.
Ogbe said one of the victims, one Inspector Tuesday Oluwasegun Osagbemi, a native of Ponyan in Kogi State, was killed in front of his office in Ibadan, Oyo State, leaving behind a wife and children.
”You would recall that the family of the immediate elder brother of the deceased, who is also a Police officer and presently out of the country, Mrs Oluwafunmilayo Esther Ayodele, alleged threats to her life and that of her children by an unknown person (s) which was reported to the Police and was published on page 10, Saturday Telegraph of 21st December, 2019,” she disclosed.
She continued, ”According to the newspaper reports, Mrs Oluwafunmilayo Esther Ayodele, wife of a police officer, had alleged threats to her life and that of her children.
”Their house was burgled without anything stolen Luckily, they were not at home as they went for a church vigil on that day and she was physically attacked with wounds on her body which almost cost her life as she is an asthma patient.
”A faceless group of criminals claimed they are responsible for all these as they are out to send a bitter message to her husband who they could not lay hand on because he is out of the country.”