By Palang Kasmi
Due to the increase in kidnapping, land grabbing and other violent crimes in the state, the Plateau State Governor Simon Bako Lalong has signed into law the Anti-land grabbing, kidnapping and cultism bill, passed by the State House of Assembly.
While signing the bill on Thursday, December 24, 2020 in Jos, Lalong said the law would address the issues of unlawful grabbing of land, rising spate of kidnapping, cultism and other crimes in his state.
“The anti-kidnapping, anti-land grabbing cultism and other anti-violence related matters law is definitely long overdue because of the increase in kidnapping and other violent crimes within the state” Lalong said explaining that his administration cannot just sit and watch the crimes continue without getting legal ways to address the challenges.
“As a responsible Government, we cannot fold our arms to see people being terrorized by criminals who are clearly out to cause mayhem”.
“This new law will deal with anyone caught in the act and I urge security agencies to be on their toes and ensure that culprits are apprehended and made to face the law”.
The Gov. called on community and religious leaders to support the government in it’s bid to rid off all forms of criminal activities in his state by playing their part as watchdogs.
“Communities should rise up to the challenge by identifying and fishing bad eggs and criminal elements living within their domains, and passing relevant information to security agencies to take action in order to make the state free of crimes”.
The law provides death sentence for those convicted for kidnapping while those found guilty of cultism shall be jailed for a minimum of 7 years, while people involved in meting out violence on anyone risks spending up to 10 years in Jail upon conviction SUNDAY STANDARD reports.
The Gov. said as part of his administrations security efforts, he recently inaugurated 592 Community Police Constabularies (CPC) who were recently trained to kick start Community Policing in all the 17 Local Government Areas of the state.
”We hope they will boost the work of the conventional security personnel to improve security in our communities particularly at the grassroots,” he added.
Giving a brief description of the new law, Barr. Rauta Dakok, the Solicitor General of the state and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Justice, explained that the law seeks to prohibit any person or group of persons from forcible takeover of landed property belonging to either a citizens of the state or government.
According to her, the law, also seeks to address issues of land grabbing, kidnapping and cultism, that have bedeviled the state.
