Sunday 9 June 2013

Nigeria Police Need Effective Public Communication To Be Efficient, Lawyers Say


The police was advised to pay attention to its internal challenges preventing it from effectively performing its duties.
Some lawyers have called on the management of the Nigeria Police to pay more attention to the many internal challenges preventing the institution from effectively discharging its constitutional responsibility of maintaining law and order.
They gave the advice at the Southwest edition of a one-day workshop on the Geo-political Security Awareness on Policing through intelligence and Community Partnership. They suggested that the police need to effectively relate with the public so as to gain their cooperation in the fight against crime. A former Director of Public Prosecution, Lagos State, Fola Arthur-Worrey, who was the lead speaker at the occasion, expressed worry over the poor state of intelligence gathering and management within the security sector of the nation.
According to Mr. Arthur-Worrey, the weakness has made it possible for many criminal-minded Nigerians to go about changing locations and committing similar crimes without the police knowing their crime history even if they have been caught and prosecuted by the police elsewhere in the country. “We must develop robust internal intelligence gathering and management.
The police should have criminal record of all citizens and residents and there should be information sharing among all the security outfits in the country,” he said. He urged the Presidency to come up with an executive order that will empower the Police to make use of the biodata information collected by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the voters register and those collated by the Nigerian Communication Commission, NCC, for sim registration as resources to combat crime.
Human rights lawyer and one of the speakers, Bamidele Aturu, stressed the need for the nation to have a social security system to address the rising problem of unemployment, which he identified to be partly responsible for high crime rate. He noted that the government must address the widening gap between the lowest and highest income earners. In order to keep armed robbery at check, the lawyer said the constitution should be amended to allow more Nigerians to bear arms for self defence.
The Inspector General of Police, IG, Mohammed Abubakar, who was represented by Abdurahaman Akano, the Deputy Inspector General of Police in Southwest, called for a paradigm shift from the old order of security management to a new order that would fully involve the police, citizens and the government. He noted that realities of the modern day policing calls for firm relationship among all stakeholders. The IG said the workshop, which drew participants from across the six states of Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos, was designed to feel the pulse of members of the on police functions, and others.

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