The Kwara State Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, Umar Mohammed, has expressed concern at the rate of vandalism of government facilities in cities and towns across the country, describing it as alarming.
Mohammed spoke in Ilorin, the state capital, on Wednesday, while parading seven suspects caught with vandalised electrical cables and arrested by a security patrol at the University of Ilorin campus.
He said, “Almost all our cities and towns, public facilities which are provided by the government are being vandalised by unscrupulous people as soon they have been installed.
“These facilities are provided with the money obtained through tax and their vandalisation is mere wastage of the money with which these facilities are provided.”
The commandant appealed to the public not to see the government properties or facilities as nobody’s property but rather, they should see it as theirs and protect it.
He said the government spends a lot of money in replacing the vandalised facilities, “and where government fails to replace them, many people suffer for the action of these few disgruntled elements.”
Among the suspects paraded were Awal Issa, 18, Ibrahim Musa, 19, Ibrahim Mohammed, 15, Yau Yahaya, 19, Aliu Abubakar, 24, Sulaiman Abubakar, 18, Musa Adisa, 21.
The commandant also said that the suspects were arrested for the alleged theft of electrical cables, adding that “Yau Yahaya and Musa Ibrahim who were scrab-dealers at Tanke Oke Odo area, Ilorin allegedly stole electric cables at the Jalala Staff Quarters of the university.