A right activist and Vice President of the Committee for Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) Dr. Kehinde Taiga, has lamented the extortion of traders, especially members of the Pigs Travellers Association, by security operatives, mostly policemen and soldiers mounting checkpoints on the highway from the Northern to Southern part of the country.
Making his grievances known in an open letter addressed to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu and the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt. General Tukur Buratai, he urged the duo to call their men manning checkpoints along the routes from Northern to Southern states to order, in order to reduce the burden on the poor traders.
He noted that members of the association were made to pay N2000 on each truck load oonveying their pigs, adding that they usually meet over twenty (20) checkpoints from where they buy in the North till they get to their destinations in the South.
According to the activist who was the immediate past Chairman of Delta state chapter of CDHR, this extortion of traders must not be allowed to continue as it’s becoming a huge burden on the traders who in turn push the extra cost on the consumers, thereby making pork meat very expensive.
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“This lawlessness on the highway from the north to the south by the security operatives who manned these checkpoints must not be allowed to continue as it is making life unbearable to these pig traders who were subjected to extra burden settlements on the highway by security operatives”
“I am therefore using the medium to call on the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lt.Gen. Buratai and the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu, to, as a matter of urgency ,call their men posted to these checkpoints to order.
“It is only when they desist from extorting the traders who come from Southern part of the country to North to buy pigs sold as pork meats in the other parts of the country that the business would become lucrative for these traders”.
“This is no time to time to continue to play lips service to the atrocities caused by the security operatives on the highway against the traders, adding that the hardship inflicted on the traders by the police and soldiers on the highway was becoming unbearable”, he stated.
