By Christopher Oji
Oyo State Police Command has said that crime rate has reduced drastically in the state. A source from the command headquarters in Ibadan, capital of the state, told our correspondent that a letter from the office of the Commissioner of Police, Department of Operations, addressed to Governor Seyi Makinde “shows that Oyo State actually recorded lower armed robbery cases in 2020, compared to what it was in 2019. The statistics in 2019 showed a total number of 182 while 123 was recorded in 2020.”
The report also indicated that “armed robbery appeared to be on a good decline with about 45/50% decline.”
The police said the statistics showed that the governor’s efforts to secure Oyo is working. The report further showed that the new form of criminality in the state is banditry, majorly kidnapping by invading herders.
Men of the state security outfit, Operation Burst, last week, arrested 47 armed herders suspected of attempting a reprisal in the Oke-Ogun/Ibarapa area.
Part of the move by Makinde to tackle this was the exercise launched by Operation Amotekun two weeks ago into the thick forests of Ibarapa East, Ibarapa Central and Ibarapa North and Iwajowa Local Government Areas to hunt for kidnappers and bandits. It was in collaboration with some native Fulani.
During the exercise, some bandits were killed while others were handed over to the police The governor had, in December, raised the alarm over foreign criminals sneaking into Oyo State through Saki, while warning of the potential danger.
It is this new form of criminality, which is being tackled, that many are talking about.
