The Police Command in Cross River says no fewer than 250 personnel, excluding tactical teams, will be deployed for the 20th anniversary edition of the annual Calabar carnival.
The state Commissioner of Police, Rashid Afegbua, made the disclosure to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview in Calabar on Tuesday.
He said aside the deployment of these personnel for the Carnival, all flash points across the state would be effectively manned.
“Because of the influx of visitors to the state during the period, we have mapped out strategies to ensure safety of lives and properties.
“There will be massive deployment of men within the Carnival routes and the capital city as a whole.
“While we are taking care of Calabar, the other council areas are not going to be left out as well,” he said .
He said that the command has been collaborating to create a safe, stable, and law abiding Cross River where criminal elements are denied the space to operate, and citizens feel protected, not just policed.
“To achieve this, the command disrupted criminal networks through targeted intelligence-led operations and increased police presence and response capacity in urban, rural, and border communities via visibility policing.
“Similarly, we restored trust and accountability in police-community relations and also strengthened inter-agency collaboration to ensure coordinated security efforts.
“While we remain committed to our mandate of ensuring peace and security, we appeal to members of the public and the press to continue to support our efforts by providing genuine and timely information.
“Policing is a shared responsibility, and we cannot be everywhere at once. Your cooperation is critical to our success, especially as we prepare for Carnival Calabar and Festival Event for 2025,” he appealed.
Afegbua said that since he assumed duty in July, the comammd has recorded a lot of successes in ensuring a crime free Cross River.
He said 148 persons were arrested for various offenses across the state, while a total of nine convictions were secured by the command between July and November.
The Commissioner who listed the offences to include armed robbery, murder, kidnapping, and stealing, said the command successfully prosecuted 25 court cases.
According to him, the command, within the months under review, had a total of 147 cases in court.
“From the figure, we secured nine convictions, Prosecuted 25, while we have 113 pending cases.
“From these pending cases, 60 have been transmitted to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), while 53 are pending in federal and state high courts as well as magistrate courts,” he stated.
Giving a breakdown of the arrests made, Afegbua said, 19 were for murder, 62 for stealing, 11 for armed robbery, five for attempted murder, and two for kidnapping.
Others, he said were, rape 19; malicious damage nine; unlawful possession of firearms, seven; assault, seven; vandalisation, two; while arson and cultism were two and three respectively.
The Commissioner further disclosed that a number of arms and ammunition were recovered by the command within the five months period from July to November.
According to him, “the command recovered one automatic english pump action, six locally fabricated long guns, five locally made short guns, 284 cartridges, and 520 cards of tramadols.
