Kwara state police Commissioner Kayode Egbetokun Tuesday said that crime has become a huge industry in Nigeria.
Mr. Egbetokun added that the industry is tempting and employing the unemployed in many states of the federation.
He spoke this in Ilorin, Kwara state capital at the inauguration of the state community policing advisory committee.
He challenged stakeholders to help tame the ugly development, saying that crime and criminals had their roots in different communities.
The police chief said that “crime has become a huge industry accepting all comers, attracting the greedy and absorbing the get-rich-quick, while constantly tempting and most of the time employing the unemployed in our population.
“The crime industry is getting bigger and more sophisticated by the day. Unfortunately, its only products are criminals terrorizing and causing insecurity in our communities. The irony, however, is that crimes and their products (criminals) have their roots back in the communities. Simply put, the communities are the primary producers of the bad products which we now dread so much.”
Egbetokun said that 50 persons from each of the 16 local government areas of the state would be members of the community policing advisory committee.
He called on members of the committees to identify security challenges in their respective communities with a view to proffer possible solutions.
He described the security committees as important in the state, saying that their recommendations should be made to the governor of the state, and should be devoid of political or ethnic bias.
He said the new approach, backed by the FG, is part of the coordinated responses of the IGP to recent incidents of armed banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism in some states of the federation, “with definite probability of spreading to other parts of the country if the present actions being taken to halt the trend are not taken.”
Also speaking, the Inspector General of Police, represented by the AIG zone 8 Yakubu Babas, described state committees on community policing as a bold step towards domiciling objectives of community policing policy.
“The myriad of challenges in security call for a multifaceted approach to policing, hence, adoption of community policing policy as an approach to issues of crime and criminality in Nigeria and Kwara state in particular,” he said.
Inaugurating the committee members, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq called for collaboration of all stakeholders in strengthening the community policing initiative to bring an end to security challenges in the country.
According to him all stakeholders must work together as a formidable team to defeat the cankerworm of insecurity in our communities.
AbdulRazq explained that the idea of community policing will open up interactions between security agencies and the communities with a view to finding solutions to security challenges.