From Mika’il Tsoho Dutse with agency report
The Jigawa state Police Command has successfully recovered 119 illegal firearms from the owners across the state.
The state Commissioner of Police CP Bala Zama Senchi dropped the hint yesterday while briefing news men in his office at Police Headquarter Dutse.
He explained that, the move is in line with directives from the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim K. Idris to seize any illegal firearms from the public.
According to him, as the command received the directives ,it embarked to action and mopped up, seize and recovered large number of prohibited and illegal firearms that has direct bearing on the current insecurity prevalent in most states and the nation at large.
CP Bala maintained that, the recovered items include 119 firearms sixty five round of live ammunition and six cartridges, others are 104 dane guns, 3 AK 47, 2 AK 46, 3 locally fabricated rifle, 1 Dicon Pistol, 1 Pump Action and 5 locally made pistol.
He said, most of the recovered arms were voluntarily surrendered by the owners to the task force in the state.
CP Bala then, called on people in the state who have not surrendered their illegal firearms to expeditiously drop them at any nearby police station before the Task Force embark on forceful recovery of the arms.
In a related development, the Lagos State Police Command on Tuesday said it had recovered more than 200 illegally acquired firearms from individuals and suspected hoodlums in the last seven months.
The State Commissioner of Police, Mr Edgal Imohimi, made the disclosure at a news conference in Lagos.
Imohimi said that the firearms were recovered from suspected hoodlums and those that embraced the 21 days grace period given by the Inspector-General of Police to submit their illegally possessed firearms.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the recovered arms and ammunition were taken to the Lagos State Police Command armoury.
The police chief added that the recovery covered a period of seven months, starting from September, 2017 when he assumed duty in the command.
Giving statistics of recovery, he said that the firearms consisted of 38 pump action rifles, six AK-47 rifles, 12 double barrel rifles, 11 single barrel rifles and 70 single barrel locally made cut to size shot-guns.
Others are 18 locally made revolver pistol, three Beretta pistol, 220 cartridges and 60 7.62mm AK-47 ammunition.
“As you can see on display, the firearms mop up yielded positive result in the command.
“I’m also using this opportunity to call on citizens to take advantage of the grace period and return voluntarily, prohibited firearms.
“Failure to do so will lead to lawful search of buildings and property that we have credible information on which will eventually lead to arrest and prosecution. I hope it won’t come to that,” he said.
