The Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) has opposed the establishment of a state police being desperately advocated by some governors to combat the growing insecurity in the country.
The body insisted that the federal police remains the best to fight crime and improve the electoral system, unlike the proposed state police, which according to them would be a readily-available instrument for politicians to deal with perceived opponents.
Speaking in Ado-Ekiti during the election of a new set of executives for the Ekiti chapter, the PCRC National Vice Chairman, Southwest Region, Alhaji Ibrahim Olaniyan, said creating state police under a nascent democracy like Nigeria’s will compound the problems of the country.
“We are not ripe for a state police, those calling for a state police, especially the governors are saying that for selfish interests, because they will unleash them on opponents during elections.
“The only way to combat insecurity is by educating our people on the need to give information about the situations around them to the police for prompt action .
“The police are not complicit in the insecurity being experienced , because it was the people that are harbouring criminals . They don’t report suspected criminals to the police for arrest.”
Speaking on the imperative of strong community policing to make Nigeria free from kidnapping and killings, Olaniyan said: ” Police are not magicians. All these criminals are living with us. They are not spirits. If they stay in an hotel, somebody has the hotel and he knows the data of those staying in his premises.
“In the olden days, people had this misconception that if they gave police any information, they will divulge it. This is not true.
“Let us strengthen community policing. Nigeria has over 200 million population and we can’t be bold of one million or five hundred thousand policemen.
We need to police this nation by ourselves by helping the police with the right information as members of the public.”
Assuring that the PCRC would fortify police intelligence gathering via veracious information that can make the South-West free of crimes, Olaniyan added:
“Let us join the police in strengthening community policing and this starts from our various homes and the way we partner police in fighting crime”.
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