IGP lays insecurity challenge on governors

Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, has blamed the state and local governments for the rising crime rate in the country while calling on all and sundry to partner with law enforcement agencies to curb the menace of insecurity in the country.

He said this, on Wednesday in Abuja, while fielding questions from journalists after about four hours of a closed-door meeting with the Senate in response to her summon.

The Senate, had on Wednesday last week, while deliberating on the state of security in the country summoned the IGP to appear before it and provide a template on community policing amongst others.

Adamu, who said he has briefed the Senate on the concept of community policing and its far-reaching effect in curbing insecurity, pointed out that the failings of governors, government both at state and local levels have contributed to escalating insecurity in the country.

According to the Inspector General of Police, security is the responsibility of all Nigerians, those in the helms of affairs at state and local government levels should endeavour to be responsible and ensure the good governance to arrest crimes in their respective communities.

His words: “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.

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“Everybody should be on board, what are things that lead to the commission of crimes, are those issues to be dealt with by the law enforcement agencies and security agencies? No, there are other arms of governments that will need to deal with it. State governments, governor’s local government chairman should take up their responsibilities.

“People that are committing these crimes have reasons that make them commit the crimes. If it is lack of employment or education or those issues that would require interventions by the government, those state government should take responsibilities.

“All local government chairman should take responsibilities, not that everything should be left to the security guys alone,” Adamu said.

The Inspector-General of Police, who shared his encounter with Senators, said community policing holds a lot of promise in detecting and exposing crimes and criminality because the community knows and understands itself and its people know each other.

He also explained that the concept of community, in this case, encapsulates associations and unions which could be veritable sources of information to the police on security issues and such they are critical to the new concept being contemplated for operations.

Adamu said: “We met today and briefed them on the concept of community policing. If you can remember, last year we sensitised the whole country on the need to adapt 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 the commission of crimes and then we work with the community to solve the crime.

“We believe that everybody comes from the community, as you all know in a community we know who and who is there, so, taking policing back to them will help in reducing crime to the barest minimum.

“I have explained the concept of the community policing to Senate which involves partnership with communities and their 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 commission of crimes or crimes or the crimes that have been committed already and we analyse the problems and then we look for the solutions.

“The references that are available, then we deploy resources to deal with the problems and subsequently we evaluate all our responses to see how we can adjust to solve the problem.

“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.

“Security issues are fluid, dynamic and at a stage where you have a rise in crime, we re-strategise and everywhere will be stabilized and at such a time you will see stability in crime situation.

“At another stage where you have rise in crime, we strategising with them and everywhere will be stabilized.

“And for a period of time, you will see stability in crime situation and at other time you will see the criminals also re-strategising and coming out to commit crimes.

On his part, the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, said the Senate has resolved to support the Nigerian police vide legislative interventions to make for the realisation of the community policing concept to combat the banditry, kidnapping and assaults on the nation’s highway.

The Senate further charged the police to be operationally proactive to protect the lives and properties of Nigerians.

It called for synergy between all tiers of government towards a solution to the insecurity that has engulfed the nation.

According to Lawan: “The IG answered questions bordering on National security challenges, banditry, assaults on our major roads across the country, illegal circulation of firearms and efforts on encouraging synergy between the federal and states governments from distinguished senators.

“The Senate, thereafter, resolved to support the Nigerian Police through legislative interventions.

“The police force must find a way to be more operationally proactive to protect the life’s of the citizens,” the President of the Senate stated.