The Nigeria Police Force is poised to effectively curb insecurity across the federation and close to five hundred suspects have recently been arrested across Benue, Taraba and Adamawa states, Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Jimoh Moshood has said.
โHonestly we are dealing with the situation head on, that is why we deploy strategies to prevent much more than to be reactive and we are engaging the communities because there is no way you can police in isolation, that is why we are championing the cause of community policing.
โThough these crises occur but we have prevented far many more than the ones that have occurred.
โThat is why every hand must be on deck; across the world, police alone donโt resolve issues that lead to crime, the communities are very important to assist the police in doing so.โ
According to Moshood, there is a special directive from the Inspector-General of Police aiming to reinforce police special operations through the release of more personnel from the protection of VIPs and police administrative duties.
โWe call for calm because the Inspector General of Police has directed all Commissioners of Police in state commands and the AIGs, along with all their personnel, to be on red alert.
โThey have also been directed to take more personnel from administrative tasks so that we will have more personnel to deploy for operations.
โThe withdrawal of personnel from the VIPs is enabling us to have more men to deploy.
โWe are using more of our technical and intelligence-gathering platforms; we have made a lot of success and the most important thing around this time is the mopping up of illegal fire arms and prohibited weapons from wrong hands and this effort has been largely successful across the country.
โThis will help us to have a firm grip on the herders and farmers clashes and other kinds of killings that has been occurring but most importantly, the community is the centre-piece of our crime prevention strategy as we speak,โ he said.
Identifying potential causes of further breaches to security, the police spokesman noted that some mischievous elites are seeking to exploit the problems in certain areas by giving it some ethno-religious colouration that can inspire worse violence.
โThe threat to security is taking different dimension, some people what to manipulate the threats and give it different colourations so that it can become a widespread crises across the country and we call on people to be peaceful and calm and report suspicious movements to the police.
โHowever, there is need for people who want to take advantage of the situation for political gains to know that it will not do them and the nation any good.
โMischievous politicians should know that the security of everybody is paramount.
โWe discourage people from going on vengeance or reprisal mission and to allow the police to investigate thoroughly; the most important thing at this time is that people should be more vigilant.
โThe police deployment is thorough; we have increased the numbers being deployed not only to Benue but to all those other flash points.
โAside from those handed over by the military and other agencies, we have arrested close to 500 across north central states where we have this problem. We have so many successes from Benue, Taraba and Adamawa.
โWe have arrested about 500 suspects that are involved in killings of innocent Nigerians; we are making progress but we want people to trust and have confidence in us that will do much more and we are not resting on our oars.โ
