By Aplefe Ojong
Residents of Calabar Metropolis, the capital city of Cross River State are now living in constant fear as men of the underworld are on rampage in the city.
CrossRiverWatch gathered that Calabar has so much become a fertile territory for the bandits that they now operate with all amount of impunity.
Stories of every night and at times even broad day light operations of the deadly groups of human beings abounds from the western and southern parts of Calabar such as Mbukpa, Anantigha, Atamunu, Mount Zion/ Orok Orok and Watt Market areas to the central, eastern and northern parts such as Atimbo/Edim Otop, Barracks road by the Police Barracks, MCC road/ Akai Effa, Into Ansa/Ikot Ishie and Eight Miles areas among other areas.
CrossRiverWatch reliably gathered that recently the State Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Eyo Eyo-Nsa It am was robbed in his residence by a 12-man robbery gang which included a woman, but that luck ran out on two of the 12 men as they were arrested and are presently helping the Police in its investigation, as they are cooling their heels in the Police cell at the State Police Headquarters, Diamond Hill, Calabar.
Sources equally informed CrossRiverWatch that a phone shop owned by a young man from the Central Senatorial District of the State located by the premises of the Police Barracks by the Barracks Road, Calabar was recently burgled and every phone and phone accessories stolen.
We are also gathered that this was the second time the young man’s phone shop was burgled this year in spite of the heavy and sophisticated protectors installed in the shop.
A respondent who spoke to us in anonymity questioned why armed robbery will take place, not once but twice in a Police Barracks premises without the notice of the Police, but that yet in the two separate incidents, it was the Police patrol team that discovered the burglary incidents.
Another source told us that “It is as if governor Imoke’s relocation of Government House to Abuja, consequent upon the political powers and control that are undoubtedly slipping out of his hitherto firmed grip, has also taken with him the security forces, or that the security agencies have not been given their allowances by the Cross River State Government, hence the lack luster attitude to policing the state and the state capital, Calabar in particular, and the end result is this unbridled robbery operations, dispossessing many families of their hard earned money and property, causing even bodily injuries and at times death”, the source concluded.
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