The Rivers State Police Command has warned officers against illegal enforcement and extortion of motorists as it commences a crackdown on vehicles without authorised number plates in Port Harcourt.
The State Commissioner of Police, Olugbenga Adepoju, said the operation is aimed at ensuring that all vehicles in the state are properly registered. He stressed that vehicles without valid registration or those with concealed number plates will not be permitted to operate in the state.
Speaking while flagging off the exercise on Monday June 15, 2025, Adepoju cautioned officers of the Nigeria Police Force to carry out their duties professionally and avoid exploiting offenders.
“The number has a reason for being there, if anything is being committed or the vehicle is being snatched, we’ll get your number and radio it for everyone to ensure that the vehicle is being intercepted.
It is equally good you have your vehicle registered and put the plate number on the vehicle so that if there is an issue of somebody being kidnapped or the vehicle is snatched, we will be able to recover the vehicle.
But we know that a lot of people don’t do that because either they want to use it to commit nefarious activities by kidnapping, conveying arms and whatever. So we’re here to enforce and ensure that everybody complies with the order”
The Police Commissioner further reiterated that the restriction on the movement of tricycles and commercial motorcycles beyond 10 p.m. remains in force.
He however, clarified that minibuses, popularly known as Keke-bus, are exempted from the restriction.
“By ten o’clock, motorcycle and tricycle will be kept off the road, and kept until early hours of the morning before they are released to reduce the level of kidnapping and one chance because that is what they have been using recently.
For Keke-bus, we’ve not been able to get many of them using it for such acts, I know some still do, but we don’t want to inconvenience members of the public from getting to their home at late hours so what we do is that early hours of the morning, we make sure that those categories of transportation are being thoroughly monitored”.
Adepoju however called on officers of the Police Force to act professionally during the clampdown of unauthorised vehicles in the state. He warned them strictly against using the exercise as an avenue for exploiting or extorting unsuspecting members of the public.