March 26, 2018

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Ondo State Command, has pledged zero tolerance for vandalism of oil pipelines and other government facilities in the state.

Mr Pedro Awili, the NSCDC State Commandant, made this pledge while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Akure.

According to Awili, the command will live up to its mandate of protecting all critical assets and infrastructures of government across the state and make the state crime free.

“Our target in the first quarter of the year is to consolidate on the activities we have already carried out in 2017, which we have done and we will step up efforts on them.

“We gave ourselves the target of ensuring that there is very little or no vandalism in respect of pipeline and all critical assets and infrastructures of government.

“We want to ensure that there is no more vandalism of high tension cable, transformers, and other installations of government anywhere in the state.

“We have been able to achieve all these by deploying our men to all the nooks and crannies of the state, especially at the Local Government Areas,” he said.

The NSCDC commandant said that the clashes between herdsmen and farmers had been reduced drastically due to the timely intervention of men of the corps in the state.

He said the command had warned “those perpetrating crime in the state to either vacate or face the full wrath of the law”.

Awili said that the command had ensured that the available manpower within the state command had been evenly distributed across the state, even up to the farms, where we are protecting the farmers”.

“We have also instructed our men we deployed to these areas to give us intelligence information that will help the Federal, State and Local Governments, especially in combating crime,” he said.

He, therefore, admonished members of the corps to ensure that any suspect arrested is carefully investigated and prosecuted.

“There is nothing like negotiation with a real criminal, once arrested; this will serve as a deterrent to other people, who may want to commit crimes.

“We do not encourage the suspects we have arrested, we discourage them by taking them to court for prosecution; that is the only way to discourage criminality”.