BY Emma Amaize

AGBOR – DELTA State Government, yesterday, directed the state Police Command to fish out, arrest and prosecute the self-styled new monarch of Abavo kingdom in Ika South Local Government Area of the state and all those who installed him.

Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, at Agbor, headquarters of Ika South council, after a State Security Council meeting, he chaired, also directed that, henceforth, family members and associates of suspected kidnappers found to have aided and abetted them in their kidnapping operations, would be punished.

Secretary to the State Government, Mr Ovuozorie Macaulay, who spoke to Vanguard at the end of the meeting, said, the State Security Council also directed the police to shut down a guesthouse in Asaba discovered to be hideouts for criminals.

He warned hoteliers in the state to desist from allowing their hotels to be used as hideouts by criminals.

The order to clamp down on the supposed monarch and his group threw the opposing faction in the Abavo Kingship crisis into a quagmire, yesterday.

Villagers who are getting ready to confront the reigning monarch after their own ‘king’ might  have completed his eight-day purification rites, reportedly went underground, when news of  government’s decision filtered to Abavo.

Vanguard gathered that government only recognised HRH Uche Irenuma II, as the Obi of Abavo Kingdom, as he was appropriately enthroned by his people and gazetted by government as Abavo monarch.

“It is the position of government that anybody who is against his ascendancy to power should go to court to obtain an overriding order and until that was done, nobody should parade himself as monarch  in Abavo”, a top government official confided to Vanguard.