The Senate yesterday mandated its Committee on Police Affairs to invite the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to suggest ways and means of actualising community policing in the country.
The resolution followed a motion, tagged: “The need to Post Junior Cadre of the Nigeria Police Force to their States and Local Governments to Enhance Community Policing in Nigeria” sponsored by Ademola Adeleke (PDP, Osun West). Adeleke, while leading debate on the motion, said the Senate was “concerned that government inconsistency in policy implementation has affected the Nigeria police’s welfare and wellbeing and by necessary implication their impact, which also adversely affected the citizens in the society in terms of service delivery.”
He stressed that “it is desirous that the lower rank of the Nigeria Police (Constables to the rank of Inspectors) be posted to their respective states of origin to improve and impact positively on community policing through synergising with vigilante groups, traditional rulers so as to address the current state of insecurity in the country.”
The lawmaker noted that there had been calls for the creation of state police in order to proffer a lasting solution to the perennial security challenges due to the ineffectiveness or outright bias of the Nigerian Police Force in carrying out their national assignment.
Adeleke also observed that the disconnect between the Nigerian Police and the various communities with their different cultural values and orientations created a vacuum that needed to be filled through community policing.
He said this would pave the way for the Federal Police to concentrate on its primary duties of detection, prevention and prosecution of crime at the national level. Contributing, Emmanuel Bwacha (PDP, Taraba South) said implementing community policing would help check crimes andcriminalities in communities across the country.
Bwacha noted that persistent killings and other criminal activities would have reduced drastically or even stopped if the police had been working with vigilante or other community security groups. In his remarks, the deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, who presided at the plenary, urged the Police authorities to implement its idea of enhancing community policing in the country, pointing out that different countries have different policing architecture to enhance security
