Insecurity: Abdulsalami, Abdullahi, Moghalu make case for community policing
Participants at the two-day discussions on how to tackle the problems besetting the land rose on Tuesday supporting the establishment of community policing.
The conference was organized in Minna, the Niger State capital by the Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution.
They identified community policing as one of the ways to end insecurity in the country.
Their position was contained in the communique issued at the end of the two day roundtable meeting signed by the Director of the Abdulsalami Abubakar Institute for Peace and Sustainable Development Studies, Dr. Diamond Preye Nebechukwu.
The participants, numbering about 50 eminent Nigerians from different parts of the country, further recommended that the role of the military should be limited to defending Nigeria and “not doing police jobs as witnessed all over the country.”
The communique further said that police and related paramilitary organizations should be better trained and equipped in playing their traditional roles.
It reads: “Nigeria needs to accelerate the process of recruitment of additional security personnel especially the police. This calls for community policing.”
The participants further noted that poverty, arising from the economic crisis, has been identified as one of the main causes of insecurity across the nation. They also said that the proliferation of small arms and light weapons have fueled the crises.
The communique further reads: “The Participants were in agreement that every part of Nigeria is today bedeviled by one form of extremist violence or the other and that these conflicts are increasingly having a corrosive effect on the Nigeria State.
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“The cause of the insecurity include, poverty rising from the economic crisis in the country and bellicious political activities, environmental scarcity in the far north and the rising perception of injustice by ethnic and religious groups.”
The communique further proffered that federal and state governments should ensure clear separation of religion and the state adding that there should be models for mediation set up by state and federal government.
“The Federal Government should establish a National mediation Council and state government should establish harmony and mediation centers to foster peaceful co-existence and inter-group harmony,” they said.
Among the participants were: former Foreign Affairs Minister Prof Bolaji Akinyemi; Northern Elders’ Forum (NEF) leader Prof Ango Abdullahi; PDP National Women Leader, Josephine Anenih, Ambassador Yahaya Gwande; Gen Alexander Ogomudia (rtd); Young Progressive Party’s (YPP’s) presidential candidate Prof Kingsley Moghalu; Emir of Bida and Chairman Niger State Council Of Traditional Rulers, Yahaya Abubakar and Emir of Minna Umar Farouk Bahago, representatives of the Chief of Defence Staff, the National Security Adviser (NSA), among others.
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