Amidst recent growing wave of criminal activities sweeping over Nimba county, especial the county’s commercial city- Ganta, Nimba County Superintendent, Nelson N. Korquoi has called on the leadership of every community to organize vigilante groups that would help protect citizens, especially during the late night hours.
The Nimba county Superintendent who by virtue of his position is the head of the County’s Security Council wants community leaderships, especially in Ganta work with the Liberia National Police and city authorities to set up well-structured vigilante groups in every commumity to help reduce the ”very” high criminal rate in the county.
Recently, Ganta city alone has reported more than ten cases of different crimes including Armed Robbery, Attempted Murder, Hijacking among others, something Supt. Korquoi said is unprecedented and needs to be tackled immediately.
Those crimes, among others are usually committed by disadvantaged youth most of whom are drug addicts and referred to as ”Zogos”.
They (Zogos) usually take to the streets during late night hours and group themselves in strategic areas in the darkest parts of the city to carry out their criminal activities, according to our reporter who have been following this latter development in the county.
According to our reporter, those zogos as a way of terrifying their victims and onlookers who may want to come in defend whenever they are carrying out their robberies and harassments, are usually seen carrying machetes, local produced single barrel pistols and other harmful weapons.
Speaking to a local radio station in the county, Supt. Korquoi noted that the setting up of vigilante groups will greatly help many of those hard-to-reach communities, especially since police presence is not everywhere especially during the night.
”We are encouraging communities leadership to setup vigilante to help the security because we all know that the police do not have the support to be everywhere. In fact, they don’t even have logistics to swiftly respond to crimes”, Supt. Korquoi stated.
The Nimba County Superintendent said it is sad to see business people who are significantly contributing to the development of the county being harassed, and bodily pains inflicted on them by criminals on a daily basis.
According to Supt. Korquoi, news of criminal activities being on the increase in any given community has the tendency to scare potential investors away, thereby crippling economic activities in that community.
”If we don’t work together to arrest this situation now, it might harm all of us as these kinds of news can even scare investors away from us”, Supt. Korquoi stressed.
The Nimba County Superintedent speaking further, frowned on those serving as hosts for criminals who come from out of the county to perpetrate crimes and threatened to use the law to drastically deal with anyone caught harbouring criminals in whatever way.
”Some of our own citizens are hosting these criminals. And we want to call on them to stop because the law won’t be kind to them when caught”, Korquoi threatened.
According to him, the recent high wave of criminal of criminal activities being experienced in the county are being carried out by people from outside of the county and by that, there are people in the county that are hosting them.
