BEVERLY HILLS, July 04, (THEWILL) – Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has revealed that the Federal Government would soon announce new policy on community policing for better service delivery.
Osinbajo disclosed this on Tuesday at the presentation and launch of a book ‘Law on Prevention and Detection of Crimes by the Police in Nigeria’ in Abuja represented by his Special Adviser on Political Matters, Babafemi Ojodu.
The acting president said that sitting down in Abuja to police other remote parts of the country was not practicable any longer.
He assured that the establishment of community policing would not take away the powers of the national police saying the fear about decentralisation of the police was not tenable as it could be addressed.
“There is no way we can continue with the way we are going with policing now,” he said.
“For us to continue this old way of policing our country, I don’t think it can work and it is not working. We have to look at other parts of the world, how they are doing it.”
Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo state also agreed that the establishment of state police would go a long way to check crime and criminality in the country.
“We cannot police the over 180 million Nigerians from Abuja, we cannot run away from state police,” Obaseki said.
The Chairman of the occasion, former governor of Cross River, Donald Duke, said that the book had documented over 35 years of service experience and added to the repertoire of scarce institutional knowledge in Nigerian policing.
He also supported the establishment of state police, saying that it should be made to work alongside the national police and disagreed with the author that state police if established would be abused by the states.
“I must say however, that I disagree with the author’s position that state policing, though theoretically ideal, will be abused,” he said.
“The fear of abuse can be mitigated by an oversight responsibility or authority by the Commissioner of police in the State or a State Police regulatory commission.
“The decentralisation of policing and presence is the greatest deterrent to crime and allows for better monitoring and intelligence gathering.”
He called for the review of entry levels into the Nigeria Police Force from OND to HND, adding that aptitude tests should be introduced for entry and promotions.
He declared that barracks practice must be abrogated, saying the police ought to live amongst the people and not amongst themselves revealing that the barracks were conceived to protect the expatriate colonial administrators from the rest of the civil population.
