We’ll arrest joggers, FCT enforcement team vows, as mobile court convicts 20 lockdown defaulters

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Lockdown Enforcement Team, on Wednesday arraigned and convicted about 20 violators.

The team arraigned them before the five mobile courts recently set up by the FCT administration to try violators of the COVID-19 lockdown order in the nation’s capital.

The team has equally vowed to go after and arrest joggers in FCT for disobeying the lockdown order.

Meanwhile, the convicted lockdown offenders were fined between N1,000 and N5,000.

The mobile court held that those with vehicles would only get them back after the lockdown has been lifted and with the likelihood of paying for demurrage.

Chairman of the Enforcement Team, Mr Ikharo Attah giving an update on the level of compliance with emergency regulations put in place by both the Federal Government and the FCT Administration to control the spread of the Novel Coronavirus said:

“We have at least five Mobile Courts and we are hoping to open more with the assistance of the Legal Unit of the Directorate of Road Traffic Services DRTS.

“As of 1 pm, we already secured 20 convictions, while two pleaded not guilty. We also arrested a man who is not a policeman but who was wearing a police face cap and he has been detained at the Police Station in Mpape.

“We were on the Kubwa-Mpape road as early as 4 am but we are going to tighten our grip on these areas because when we locked down Mpape to traffic, we discovered that residents were sneaking out massively on foot to access Maitama.

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“While we are continuing with our general enforcement, we are going to start arresting joggers as from Friday. We now have thousands of people coming out in some areas to jog, very early in the morning. We are going to arrest them.”

According to Attah, part of those arrested and convicted included fake policeman, who were arrested in the Mpape area of Abuja.

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