Okey Sampson, Umuahia
Abia State Governor Okezie Ikpeazu, has said Mobile Courts set up to try offenders of COVID-19 lockdown order would start sitting simultaneously in three zones of Abia State as from today.
This is even as security men have arrested 24 women from a neighbouring state for violating the border closure and lockdown order in Abia State.
Addressing journalists at the Governor’s Lodge in Aba, Saturday night, on new measures introduced by his administration to check COVID-19 spread, Ikpeazu said the mobile courts would sit in Aba, Umuahia and Ohafia and would try offenders who breach the lockdown directive.
The governor also announced the compulsory use of face masks in state.
“The use of face masks in Abia State is a compulsory uniform, henceforth defaulters shall be apprehended and prosecuted by the Mobile Courts established for that purpose. The courts shall commence sitting from today,” he said.
He said people of the state would not allow the ineptitude or carelessness of a few to put the majority on harms way.
Meanwhile, a statement by the Commissioner for Homeland Security, Prince Dan Okoli, said Abia State Vigilante Service has arrested 24 women from Akwa Ibom State in a truck smuggled into Aba, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, a boundary community between the two states.
Okoli said the women were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the border closure and lockdown order by Abia government.
The commissioner noted that a situation where people are smuggled into Abia from other states poses a great threat to efforts by the government to contain the spread of COVID-19.
Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, in a statement, said he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the stranded women in his truck.