Seven police officers have been fired by the Imo State Police Command after they were discovered to have engaged in acts of police brutality, harassment, extortion, illegal phone-checking, and flagrant disobedience to the Inspector General of Police’s instructions regarding extortion and rudeness toward the general public.
According to a statement from the Command’s spokesperson, Mike Abattam, the ex-officers have also been charged in court. He listed their names as F/No. 462315 Sgt. Ohakim Chibuzo, F/No. 505455 Sgt. Irome Finian, F/No. 505592 Sgt. George Osueke, F/No. 511966 Cpl. Kelechi Onuegbu, F/No. 512
He added that the ex-policemen were detained on November 8, 2022, in a cell in Umuahia, Abia State, while engaging in illicit activity outside of their purview and conspiring to extort money from a victim who was innocent.
According to the police spokesman, they defaulted, were tried and found guilty of the charges brought against them, after which they were summarily dismissed and charged to Magistrate Court, Owerri, with Charge Sheet Number: No. OW/746C/2022.
According to Abattam, the state’s commissioner of police has ordered all area commanders, heads of departments, divisional police officers, and tactical team commanders of the various units in the command to make sure their subordinates are warned against engaging in shady behavior because any police officer found to be complicit will be subject to disciplinary action.
In order to prevent any unprofessional behavior by police officers, he also gave orders to the officers in command of the Inspector-General of Police X-Squad Unit and the Commissioner of Police Monitoring Unit to start high-level monitoring of the police officers both inside and outside the city.