Garba Shehu, a presidential
spokesman, says a lot of states asking for community policing are unable to
cope with salary payment.
There has been a clamour for
state policing in some parts of the country, and this had led to the creation
of Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed Operation Amotekun in the southwest
states.
The federal government had on
Thursday approved N13.3 billion for the take-off of community policing in the
country.
Appearing on Sunrise Daily, a
Channels Television show on Tuesday, Shehu was asked why it took long for the
approval to be made.
Responding, he said: “For
President Muhammadu Buhari, the concern has always been about the spread and
abuse of weapons in the hands of police.
“He said repeatedly that, look, a
lot of the states that had clamoured for state police, many of them are unable
to cope with salary payment. If you hire a community policeman and give him a
gun, and keep him for five, six months without salary, what do you expect?
Efforts have been taken so that situations of this kind do not arise. So,
therefore, there is a standard national procedure and prescription for each of
the states to comply with.”
Shehu also said Amotekun cannot
operate outside the structures laid down by the police authorities.
“Whatever name they go by,
Amotekun or whatever, they will be streamlined and they will be run in
accordance with the structure as defined by the inspector-general of police,”
he said.
“They will be localised, they
will be owned by local communities, they will be managed by them. You know, the
constitution of the committee has been defined to include council chairmen,
religious leaders, traditional leaders, civil society groups and all of that.
“They can choose their own
nomenclature but it doesn’t make a difference. There is a general structure for
all state and local council community policing mechanisms and this should abide
in the states.
“So, we are going to have a
single type structure community policing across the country and whatever is not
in line with this does not have a place in the new scheme of things.”
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