CLO hails Soludo’s bold steps to end touting

The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), has lauded the Anambra Government’s inauguration of a Special Anti-Touting Squad to end the unwholesome phenomenon and other related misbehaviours in the state. The state Chairman of the organisation, Mr Vincent Ezekwueme, made the remark in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu on Wednesday. He said that the barbaric and despicable acts by touts was scaring away customers and visitors to the state, hence jeopardising economic activities. “This is a welcome development and a bold step in the right direction towards eliminating devilish and insensible touts and their sponsors that have taken over all the nooks and crannies of the state,” Ezekwueme said. He further said that illegal revenue agents, touts and unauthorised emblem boys had persistently molested, extorted, exploited and intimidated law-abiding residents, traders and visitors “with reckless abandon”. According to him, before Anambra residents lived in fear as if we werr in a state of nature, where life was ‘brutish, nasty and short’. Ezekwueme said: “We recall with regret how a nursing mother with about six-month-old baby hawking face masks at Williams Street, near Main Market, Onitsha, was brutalised by morally depraved illegal revenue agents. “It was through my intervention with other public-spirited individuals that the woman was rescued. “She lamented that she made sales of N300 and the tout collected it from her and demanded for more, which she resisted, leading to her molestation.” The CLO boss, however, said that the much cherished squad would amount to fruitless effort, “if government failed to constitute ‘Monitoring the Monitors Committee’”. “The committee should be saddled with the responsibility of ensuring that the squad operates in tandem with the mandate handed to it by the governor. “Its members should be properly and adequately trained, equipped, cautioned and advised to toe the path of civility, decorum, constitutionality, rule of law and respect for fundamental rights of citizens. “They should be patriotic, humane, selfless and civil in discharging their duties as their conduct will be used to evaluate the government,” Ezekwueme said. (NAN)(