I’ll Make Community Policing Effective, pledges made by IGP Egbetokun

In the upcoming days and months, the new police chief promised to reveal his plans for securing the nation and safeguarding Nigerians.
Kayode Egbetokun, the recently appointed Inspector General of Police (IGP), promised to make community policing effective as soon as he took office at the Force Headquarters in Abuja.

When he officially succeeded former IGP Usman Baba as the head of the Nigerian Police Force on Wednesday, he said as much.

Police officers have been cautioned by IGP Egbetokun that he will not tolerate misbehavior, corruption, or abuse of authority. He also threatened to punish violating officers harshly.

The new police chief also announced that he would reveal his plans in the next days and months for securing the nation and safeguarding Nigerians from all kinds of security threats, such as robberies and gunman assaults.

The salaries of constables hired a while ago are already being looked at, according to IGP Egbetokun, and the salaries, arrears, and allowances will be paid by the end of the month.

Under his leadership, he claims that every law-abiding citizen will be included in the effort to combat crime. The new police chief emphasized that in order to reduce crime, both technology and human intelligence gathered from communities would be employed.

“In addition to technical knowledge, we will rely heavily on the human intelligence present in our communities. We are going to approach resolving issues in our neighborhood pro-actively,” he declared.

Community Policing Efforts

In recent years, as banditry, brutal herdsmen attacks, killings, and kidnappings have increased in Nigeria, certain state governments and sociopolitical organizations like the Afenifere and the Ohanaeze Ndigbo have called for community policing to address unique security issues in the communities. The groups also demanded that the constitution be reviewed ahead of the 2023 elections to permit power-sharing and a decentralized policing system.

In 2020, six states in the South-West geopolitical zone joined together to launch Operation Amotekun, a regional security operation that has since been legalized and is in operation in the states of Oyo, Ondo, Ekiti, Ogun, and Osun. Additionally, the Benue State Government established the Benue Guards in 2022, while Ebube Agu, a regional security organization, was founded by five South-East state governments in 2021.

Even as calls for the police to permit them to carry assault rifles like the AK-47 grow, it has been claimed that the lack of an arms license for the personnel of these state-owned security forces hinders their efficiency.

The administration of then-President Muhammadu Buhari approved the sum of N13.3 billion in August 2020 for the launch of the community policing initiative across the country as part of its attempts to make it function, but there have been difficulties in its execution.

The challenges will be resolved.

The new IGP stated that community policing would succeed despite the obstacles that had to be overcome in order to carry out the plan.

In terms of community policing, IGP Egbetokun stated, “There are many things that we are going to do differently in the implementation of the community policing techniques that we are operating at the moment.

Just before we arrived here, I brought up that topic with the retiring IG, my immediate predecessor, and he detailed all the difficulties we are having putting community policing tactics into practice. We won’t stop working on it; instead, we’ll keep going, but we’ll review a number of things. We’ll manage to make it work.

What I Meaned When I Said I Had A Tiger In Me.

In response to his statement that he possesses a tiger and a lion ready to eat Nigeria’s internal adversaries, the new police chief stated, “I said it merely to express how very anxious I am to start working and to also communicate the message that I am aware that there are enemies that we need to battle together.

“To overcome the security concerns facing our nation today, we must all work together. The accountability will fall on everyone. We’ll all be involved; we’ll all be police officers. Every organization and law-abiding person will work with us in partnership.