The Divisional Police in Jikwoyi, FCT, Thursday, arrested some beer-parlor operators for violating the stay at home directive of the federal government which was introduced as a result of Covid-19 pandemic currently ravaging the entire country.
Of recent there had been reports that many leisure owners, especially beer-joint operators, including those in jikwoyi and other surrounding villages in Jikwoyi had been violating the stay-at-home order as issued by the Federal Government and Federal Capital Territory administration.
To enforce the directive, the Divisional Police Officer of Jikwoyi Police Station, Abubakar Adamu, (CSP), led his men and raided all the notorious places known for violating the stay-at-home order at Jikwoyi, Kpeyegyi, Dagbana, Kurudu and Augwan Gede villages, where more than fifteen joint operators, especially women were arrested and their joints closed.
Our reporter who witnessed the raid at these beer parlors, which started around 7pm, reports that at Kpeyegyi junction, where there were huge clusters of beer parlor joints, there was an open display of chairs and tables by all the beer and fish vendors.
Immediately they sighted the police vehicles approaching the junction, they ran in different directions in a chaotic manner in a bid to avoid arrest. But the police personnel were up to their antics, as they pursued and arrested some of them.
The exercise was also carried out at other villages under the Jikwoyi Police station where substantial number violators were arrested by the police.
Speaking to reporters, CSP Adamu said that the raid was not the first the division had carried out to these drinking joints. According to him, since the beginning of the lockdown, “we as a division has been complying by making sure that all the villages are secured and residents maintain the social distance and stay-at-home directive of the federal government.
“At the initial time of the directive, we were going from village to village, drinking joint to drinking sensitizing them on the need to obey the directive just for their safety, but we found out some of them aren’t heeding to our advice hence the total enforcement you people witnessed today.
“ We at end of profiling the arrested violators, we are going to charge them to court so as teach others who may be thinking that the stay-at-home order is just a lip service,” Abubakar added.
At the police station at Jikwoyi, many of those arrested were seen wailing and begging the officers to forgive them as they would not violate the directives again. They said that it was hunger and lack of nothing doing at home that made them to open their shops for business.
