SENATE WANTS POLICE PERSONNEL SENT TO STATES, LOCAL GOVT OF ORIGIN
nassnewsng.com
Senate yesterday said it is imperative for junior police personnel to be posted to their states and local governments of origin to enhance community policing and end the security crisis in the country.
If the Senate’s position stands, it means the lower ranks of the Nigeria Police Force, from Constables to the rank of Inspectors, may be posted to their respective states of origin to build synergies with vigilante groups and traditional rulers so as to address the current state of insecurity in the country.
It however, directed the Senate Committee on Police Affairs to immediately invite the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, to suggest ways and means of actualizing community policing.
The lawmakers said they are aware that there have 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 Nigeria Police Force in carrying out their national assignment.
Noting that there is disconnect between the Nigeria Police and various communities due to different cultural values and orientation, Senate maintained it has created a vacuum that needed to be filled through community policing in order to avail the Federal Police the opportunity to concentrate on its primary duties of detection, prevention and prosecution of crime.
The Senate’s position came through a motion by Senator Ademola Adeleke (Osun West). Tagged the “need to Post Junior Cadre of the Nigeria Police Force to their States and Local Government to enhance community policing in Nigeria,” the Upper Chamber however, stated that government’s inconsistency in policy implementation has affected the Nigeria police’s welfare.
Adeleke recalled that the colonial masters came to Nigeria and met the people without western education, but well established monarchy that governed the citizens internally with their security operations that cater and safeguard lives and properties within the various ethnic groups in Nigeria.
He said colonial masters inherited the already established institutions of law and order strengthened by traditional rulers through moral uprightness and sanctions that encouraged the submission of the subjects to native authority across Nigeria.
