The Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba, says police personnel who trot guns at Nigerians in order to extort them are not different from armed robbers and would be so treated.

“Any policeman holding a gun and extorting people on the road is no different from an armed robber and we cannot be glorified armed robbers,” he warned.

Mr Baba gave the warning while addressing policemen on Wednesday at Police Headquarters in Gombe, asking his men to shine acts of indiscipline.

The police chief said discipline and professionalism were the bedrock of policing, as such the service would not condone any act of corruption and indiscipline.

The IG therefore told the police personnel to live up to expectations or lose their jobs.

Mr Baba described extortion as a criminal offence, adding that “it’s serious and next to armed robbery, and such acts have no place in the police.”

In the last three weeks, no fewer than three policemen have been dismissed from the Force for irresponsible behaviours.

Mr Baba, however, commended police personnel working hard to ensure security in the state and the country as a whole.

He urged them to strengthen inter-agency cooperation, including collaboration with traditional and community leaders, to enhance security and peace across the country.

The police boss directed the Gombe State Command to ensure the training and re-training of all personnel to keep them professionally fit to serve the nation better.

Mr Baba was in the state for a three-day Security and Peace Summit convened by the state government to improve security in the state.

The Borno state Police Command has arrested a middle aged woman, Nsa Heneswa, in Maiduguri for abducting three children with the intentions to sell them.

Abdu Umar, the state Commisioner of Police(CP), said that the suspect was arrested in the process of escaping with the 3 children, all of them below 7 years at the Borno Express Motor Park.

He said that the suspect arrived Maiduguri on Wednesday August 3, and went straight to Monday market where she saw some vulnerable children popularly known as “Almajiri” begging on the road.

The suspects called one of the children and offered him N200, she then asked him to come with her to buy him some clothes, after that, she asked him to follow her to the motor park where she asked him to wait for her.

She then went back to the town in search for another victim, when she arrived at Yan’ Nono at Bulumkutu, she pretended to be a customer and stole another child belonging to one Amina Ayuba, a local fresh milk seller.

She went to the motor park and requested for a vehicle that was going to Lagos but members of the union told her it was already late, she then begged for a place to stay before the next day, again, she went out and picked the third child making three of them.

The woman ran out of luck when she decided to take one of the kids to a local restaurant when he said he was hungry, a commercial driver operating on the Abuja line at the motor park began to asked him questions on how he knew the women then he confessed that she took him from Monday market.

Umar said that on noticing suspicious attitude in the response of the lady, the security and surveillance team at the motor park arrested the woman and handed her over to the Police for Investigation.

According to him, the women confessed to have handpicked the children and was planing to take them to Lagos.

Umar said that the suspect alongside her accomplices, may said to have been in the business of buying and selling of children for sometime before the long hand of the law caught up with her last weekend.

The Commisioner of Police said that the investigation is still ongoing.

Speaking in custody she said that she was paid N500,000 for the mission.

When asked what she was going to do with the children, Heneswa said that she was taking them to “Lady B” in Victoria Ireland Lagos who promised to balanced her the remaining payment on delivery of the children.

“Honestly, this was my first time of doing this. I have never done this before. A woman in Lagos introduced me to this, I also have a nurse who was assisting me in the Maiduguri Specialist Hospital,” she said.