FG rules out state Police, to strengthen community policing

The Federal Government has said that the proposed Community Police Policy is better than the state police being clamoured for by many Nigerians, to strengthen security in the country. The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, said this on Friday in Abuja during the submission of the report of the Committee on Strengthening Internal […]

The Federal Government has said that the proposed Community Police Policy is better than the state police being clamoured for by many Nigerians, to strengthen security in the country.

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, said this on Friday in Abuja during the submission of the report of the Committee on Strengthening Internal Security Framework and Community Policing in Nigeria held at the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF).

According to him, the state police require each state government to create, recruit, train, and manage a policing system separate from the federal system, while community policing is engaging the community in every aspect of policing making policing initiative, to come from the community rather than the high command and is the best solution as against state police.

“Because the advantages of community policing outweigh the idea of state policing, the disadvantages of state policing are more than the perceived advantages. So the way to go is by community policing, which will take care of all the demands and agitation for state police,” Adamu said.

When asked on how the Federal Police tend to approach the implementation of the community police, the Police boss said lots of strategies have been put in place towards community policing. He said, “One of these is in the report to fine tune the implementation strategy. The idea is that every community that we identify people (to be recruited) from the community, they grow from your community, and they know everybody within the community would be recruited and trained as community police officer and would only work within that community.

“Which is to say that they know the terrain, they know the community such that if there is any problem within the community, they would be able to identify and that with the leadership of the community and support of the police they would be able to the problem. The community policing would still be under the Nigeria Police and their operations would be decentralized for maximum efficiency,” he said.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Boss Gida Mustapha, said the committee was inaugurated on Tuesday, 7th May, 2019 and given two months to complete the assignment.

He therefore commended members of the committee for working tirelessly to conclude this assignment, despite other pressing official engagements.

According to him, Nigerians and the present administration prides itself as having the political will to tackle the issues of insecurity occasioned by the activities of terrorists, kidnappers, bandits, militants which have remained serious threats to good governance, effective service delivery and overall economic development and wellbeing of Nigerians.

He expressed delight that the committee work covered the issues of policy, institutional and legal frameworks as well as the underlying factors that impede the capacity of our security agencies to adequately contain the various manifestations of insecurity in our dear country.

“I equally note that your work touched on the need to deploy appropriate technology in the fight against the various dimensions of criminality, the context of coordinating internal security architecture, capacity development and professionalism of security personnel, citizens’ involvement in internal security management as well as innovative funding mechanisms of security agencies and their operations and not the least, welfare of personnel,” he said.

On her part, the Chairperson of the committee who is also the Permanent Secretary, Special Services Office (SSO), Dr. Amina B. Shamaki, said members of the committee viewed their appointment as a call to duty particularly, being aware of the various dimensions of the security challenges in the country.

According to her, in order to ease the accomplishment of the assigned task, the Committee devolved into two sub-committees namely, Internal Security and Community Policing, with members of the sub-committees brainstormed and critically studied the NIPSS Report with a view to developing actionable recommendations for strengthening internal security framework and for the implementation of Community Policing in the country.

“Correspondingly, the committee has proposed innovative alternative funding mechanism to ensure the provision of infrastructure, equipping agencies with modern gadgets and weapons and for the welfare and wellbeing of personnel. The Committee emphasized the deployment of technology particularly, for intelligence gathering, pre-empting incidences of crime and for resolving complex investigations.

“We highlighted the need for the Security Committees at the state and local government levels, to be made functional and the involvement of all strata of the society including the integration of the informal security outfits into the Community Policing Strategy,” Shamaki said.