Defence
A retired Commissioner of Police, Mr Lawrence Alobi, says community policing can only succeed when public trust and confidence is guaranteed.
Alobi told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja that community policing was anchored on the principle of partnership with the community.
He said that the needed partnership with the community would never work until that trust was enthroned in the country`s policing.
The retired commissioner of police, who urged the people to assist the police and other security agencies, said the police was operating in a very antagonistic society.
He attributed some of the challenges bedeviling the police to its evolution, adding that the British established it purely to protect their interests then.
“We were colonised by the British, who established the police purely to protect their interests and that of the queen,“he said.
“The colonial and military governments introduced colonial policing and militarised policing, that is why there is repressive approach to policing, abuse of human rights, no regard for rule of law and so on,“he said.
“It has been proven by police experts that the type of government in a country determines the style of framework of policing.
“We are now in a democracy, our style of policing should be anchored on the principles of democratic policing that is participatory,“he said.
He said that community policing had been experimented in 19 states in the country but couldn’t work because of the lack of public trust and confidence.
Alobi said that until the people sees policing as their own and not the one that only protects the people in government, it would not work.
He advised government to recruit 20,000 policemen annually, to gradually correct the deficit that has hampered the performance of the police.
“The police are grossly inadequate compared to the population of the country. The police are underfunded and not motivated.
“If you want the police to perform, they should be provided with adequate funding. They also need capacity building for optimal performance,“he said.
On state police, Alobi said that the country was not yet ripe for state police.
“For now we are not ripe for state police, it is only when we develop that consciousness, when every Nigerian sees the interest of the country first and puts the country first,“he said.
“We must begin to think about being Nigerian and not our ethnicity or our religion.
“The call for the creation of state police is just to politicise policing and security,“he said.
-NAN
BE
– May 30, 2019 @ 17:05 GMT |
Tags: Community Policing can only thrive on trust confidence – Alobi
