The Lagos State police command on Friday declared that it had put all necessary safety pre-cautions on ground to ensure a hitch- free flag off of the presidential campaign of the Peoples� Democratic Party in the state.
The declaration was made exclusively to the Saturday Tribune by the image maker of the state police command, Mr. Bode Ojajuni, a Superin-tendent of Police while speaking on the prepare-dness of the police towards the event.
The Lagos police PRO stated that apart from the over 20,000 mobile and conventional police-mendispatched for the event, there are also other security measures put in place to ensure that the campaign is successful.
Ojajuni who claimed that the police in the state is fully aware of the number of people coming to the event. stated that crowd control would be ensured as more policemen have been assigned the responsibilities of controlling crowd management at the arena.
He also informed the Saturday Tribune that Bomb Disposal Units would ensure uninterrupted security surveilance during the duration of the campaign while mounted troops will also assist in the crime control.
Also, traffic mana-gement at the event would be co-ordinated by the senior officers from the state traffic division.All Area Traffic Officers in the state have been mandated to ensure that vehicular movement at the event is well-managed.
The command, however, urged the politicians who will be coming to the campaign and their supporters to eschew bitterness and approach the venue in a carnival manner.
Finally, the state police command has warned social misc-reants popularly known as �area boys� to keep away from the Tafawa Balewa venue of the campaign since they had no business being there.
Meanwhile, All Nigeria People�s Party (ANPP) has described the deployment of a large numer of police officers and men to monitor the rally as �nothing but a senseless display of insensitivity by a PDP controlled Federal government to the plights of Lagosians in the fangs of criminals terrorizing Lagos for months now.�
According to a statement signed by the ANPP State Publicity Secretary, Chief Oluseyi Sorunke, the party described the PDP controlled Federal government as socially disconnected from the people� saying, �if the PDP had been sensitive to the security concerns of Lagosians over the last few months, perhaps, seasoned journalists like the late Godwin Agbroko and Omololu Falobi would have been alive today.
�Perhaps too, scores of our citizens who have made their marks in business would still have been alive to help lead Nigeria out of the economic morass to which we have been led by the PDP�, the ANPP said.
The party condemned the hurried deployment of 15,000 fully armed police men to a mere political function with rented crowd of men and women without passion for the PDP, saying, �we need these police men to help secure our working women who are often raped around Apon-gbon by hoodlooms while returning from work.