The Nigerian Policing Programme (NPP), a British Council Funded Programme, is aimed at improving community policing, it was learnt on Tuesday.
At an event held at the Area G Police Command in Ogba yesterday, Lagos State Intervention Officer of NPP, Ivy Basil-Ofili, said the programme is focused on improving community policing.
She said: “One of the programmes is stakeholders’ police accountability forum whereby CSOs come together to hold police accountable and also improve the community relationship between the police and the community.
“For today’s event, we are looking at strengthening the gender unit of the police, looking at the family support unit whereby they can interface with the heads of these units and the commands on how they can relate issues of gender to the police.
“We have representatives of all the DPOs in the area command and they will share their contacts with the community members, talk to them so that when they have issues they can easily call them.
“Part of the whole sensitisation is for communities to know their rights, especially when it comes to dealing with the police.”
Founder, Women’s Right and Health project (WRAHP), Bose Ironsi said she is happy “women are beginning to speak out and men are beginning to understand why violence is not the way” but we still have a lot to do.
“Before now, people didn’t understand the laws or know where to go to, so what we have done over the years is to give them information on where to get result. We have covered a large number of people because we are on television, newspapers and other social media handles where we interact with people and we have contributed significantly to the society in one way or the other,” she noted.
