The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, on Tuesday, said the police, military and other agencies involved in the management of the #EndBadGovernance protest did not use excessive force on protesters.<\/p>\n
He noted that rather, there were attacks on security agents deployed to manage the protests.<\/p>\n
Egbetokun disclosed this at a meeting of security agencies heads in Abuja.<\/p>\n
He also said the military and police did not use live ammunition during the protests.<\/p>\n
Egbetokun said, \u201cThe police and the military and indeed no other security agency involved in the management of this protest has deployed excessive use of force. Instead, what we had were attacks on security agents during the protest. From our record, there were no shooting incidents by the police.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe police or military did not use any live ammunition in the management of these protests. Instead, we have had cases where our officers were injured and are in critical condition as we speak.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will dismiss that as fake news and very wrong allegations. We didn\u2019t use excessive force at all. We didn\u2019t even deploy the whole of our strength in this protest even when it turned violent. We have water cannons we did not deploy, we have rubber bullets, we didn\u2019t use. All that we have used is teargas and nothing more. \u201c<\/p>\n
Egbetokun also disclosed that the police were not overstretched by the protests, adding that during the protests, several other criminals were nabbed.<\/p>\n
He added that other criminal activities were recorded during the protests except for kidnapping.<\/p>\n
Egbetokun said, \u201cWe were not overstretched; we had standby units that we didn\u2019t deploy in managing this protest. Even while the protests were going on, a number of them were arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cHoodlums who committed armed robbery were arrested. The only thing we didn\u2019t have was kidnapping. But any other offence that was committed we paid due attention to those criminal activities. \u201c<\/p>\n
Egbetokun said no Armoured Personnel Carrier was hijacked by the protesters in Kaduna state.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cThe situation in Kaduna is that we didn\u2019t even deploy APC for the protest. The APC you saw was deployed to the Government House in Kaduna. Protesters went to the gate and as the driver was driving out, those protesters climbed the APC. And what the driver did was to make a U-turn and go back to the front of the Government House gate. It wasn\u2019t a case of hijacking APC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking on the takeover of the Abuja stadium by police, the IG said personnel were deployed there to ensure the protection of peaceful protesters.<\/p>\n
He said, \u201cWe didn\u2019t take over the stadium, we provided security there. We assured those who approached us and told us about their intentions to stage peaceful protests. We asked them to go to a particular location and that if they went there we would provide security.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have said on several occasions that we recognise the rights of citizens to protest peacefully and that for as long as they remain peaceful, the police will be there with them. We didn\u2019t take over the stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, on Tuesday, said the police, military and other agencies involved in the management of the #EndBadGovernance protest did not use excessive force on protesters. He noted that rather, there were attacks on security agents deployed to manage the protests. Egbetokun disclosed this at a meeting of security agencies heads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":42165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42167,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42160\/revisions\/42167"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}