What I Will Do Before Locking Down Lagos ~Sanwo-Olu

The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu has revealed what he will do before enforcing another lockdown in the state; enlightening residents and creating more awareness since Coronavirus is new to everyone.

In a chat with journalists, the Lagos Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Bala Elkana, said the state through the Police Command could not enforce the new order like the conventional ones dealing with other crimes such as robbery, killing, kidnapping and others.

He said: “It is something new to all of us even from the law enforcement angle. None of our generations has witnessed this in the past. Enforcing the order is not like conventional law enforcement where we deal with armed robbery, kidnapping etc.

“This is a virus we are fighting, we have to try to educate our men to enforce this order with compassion and with a human face which is why the Commissioner of Police has tagged it ‘persuasive enforcement’. We have deployed our resources to all the boundary communities, all the 14 points that we have identified that border Ogun and Lagos have been manned to ensure that ban on non-essential interstate travel is enforced.

“Within the town also, those who are exempted during the lockdown period were allowed to go out to conduct their essential services. Those not exempted were stopped while those apprehended were charged to court.

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“Now that we are in the second phase, which is a gradual easing of lockdown in Lagos as pronounced by the President, we have restriction of movement from 8pm to 6am. We have our deployment all over to make sure that the curfew is obeyed and to a large extent, we have gotten a lot of compliance from Lagosians because, at this stage, quite a number of people accept that we are all at war against a virus and everyone must take personal responsibility in combating this virus and stopping the further spread of the virus.

“Definitely the compliance we have now is higher than what we had in the first week of the lockdown. Because then, most people didn’t even understand what we were doing. The assumption from the onset was this virus is for the rich not the poor until they see their neighbor testing positive for the virus for them to see that this is real and then the compliance is high.”

Speaking about those who trek across the borders into Lagos, Elkana said:

“The challenge is that there are free days that vehicles are allowed to move in Ogun state during the lockdown. So, when vehicles stop them at the boundary, they drop and cross to Lagos with their legs. But now that we are on the same page, we are working closely with Ogun, such that even those vehicles should not get to the border communities”.