A retired Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Mr Sotonye Wakama, has identified interference from `big men’ as the bane of recruitment of incompetent people into the Nigeria Police Force.
Wakama said this on Wednesday in Benin City as a resource person at the Community Policing Sensitisation Awareness programme organised by the police command in Edo for the recently recruited special constabularies.
He said that if the supposedly `big men’ would allow the police authorities handle its recruitment without interference, the force would be better for it.
He said that community policing had come to stay, adding that community policing strategy was to enable the police perform optimally.
Wakama stressed that the force was concerned about the ability of its personnel to perform in the field, because the police was still operating what he described as a reactive policing.
He added that there was the need to move from the former policing strategy to a new proactive strategy.
Wakama said that it was in view of this that the force hierarchy decided to collaborate with state, local governments and other stakeholders to review its strategies and the community policing strategy was birthed.
He described community policing as killing several birds with one stone.
He added that it was dangerous to wait until serious problems manifest before adopting measures to forestall insecurity and breakdown of law and order.
The retired DIG also said that the only way out of the many challenges bedeviling the force is for every police personnel to imbibe the ethics, ethos and principles of community policing.
He also said that the components of community policing are partnership, communication and collaboration as well as organisational transformation.
In his goodwill message, Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State said that the state was the first to fit into the agenda of the Inspector General of Police for states to recruit special constabularies.
The governor, represented by his Special Adviser on Security Matters, retired CSP Haruna Yusuf, said that the Sensitisation Awareness programme was necessary to enable the new recruits work in line with the vision of the IG’s community policing policy.
He said that information network in the police force is a vacuum that must be filled, adding that the special constabularies were recruited to fill that vacuum.
The governor disclosed that the state had 875 special constabularies who are on monthly stipends.
He said that the monthly stipends were to motivate them to be of optimal service delivery, adding that the government was also considering an insurance package for them.
Earlier, SP Chidi Nwabuzor, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Edo Command, said that the essence of the programme was to bring the special recruits in terms with what was expected of them.
They would be deployed into the various communities in the state, he said.
Mrs Benedicta Ebuehi, the Executive Chairman, Etsako East Local Government Area, described the community policing initiative as a welcome development.
Ebuehi, however, said that aside the issue of welfare, there was the need for a trust-based relationship between the police and their host communities.
