*As Senate backs Nigerian Police with legislative interventions
By Ignatius Okorocha
Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu on Tuesday joined majority of Nigerians to advocate for the establishment of community policing.
This was as the Senate promised to support the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) with the required legislative interventions to combat the rising insecurity in the country.
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan made this known, after four hours of close session between the senate and the Inspector General of Police,Mohammed Adamu on the security situation in the country.
The upper chamber had after consideration of five bills for first reading at plenary resolved into ‘Committee of the Whole’ for a close session with the IG of police.
The IG was invited to brief the senate on security matters and modalities to be adopted for the much canvassed community policing.
Lawan said:”The IG answered questions bordering on National security challenges,banditry,assaults on our major roads across the country.
He also responded to questions on illegal circulation of fire arms in the country and efforts made to encourage synergy between the federal and states governments to tackle insecurity.
“The senate thereafter resolved to support the Nigerian Police through legislative interventions .
According to Lawan, the police force must find a way to be more operationally proactive to protect the life’s of the citizens .
Adamu after the close session told Journalists that he had briefed the Senate on the concept of community policing.
“If you can remember, last year we sensitise the whole country on the need to adopt community policing in the country.
“The concept is to give policing back to the community and let the community take the initiative in identifying the problems that are there, that can lead to crimes and then we work with the community to solve the crime.
“We believe that every body comes from the community .
“You all know in a community we know who and who is there, taking policing back to them will help in reducing crime to the barest minimum.”
“Adamu said community policing involves partnership with communities,noting that there are various community.
“You can have traditional institution as a community, National Union of Road Transport as a community,
“You can have the media as community and various forms of community that we need partnership with.
“When we talk about the partnership, we are talking about problem solving ,we need to solve problems that are in the community.
“What we mean here is that we scan the community to find out what are the indices that can lead to the crimes that have been committed already .
“We analyse the problems and then we look for the solutions.
“Some times in doing this, we need to compensate our officers so as to key into the programme and that is essentially what I explained to the Senate.”
“What we are saying essentially with the community policing is that fighting crimes should not be left to the law enforcement agencies alone; It should not be left to the security agencies alone.”
