The governor of Nasarawa State, Abdullahi Sule, has disclosed that the state has introduced community policing.
He said the introduction of community policing in the state is to complement the police and other security agencies in combating crime.
Mr Sule said this in Abuja on Thursday after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, Punch Newspaper reports.
The governor, who was responding to questions from State House correspondents on the launch of Operation Amotekun by the South West, said all local governments and communities in the state had one form of vigilante group or another.
He expressed hope that it would transit ultimately to state police.
Amotekun is a regional security outfit, formed by states in the South-west geopolitical zone.
Governors in the South West region announced the formation of the regional paramilitary outfit last week to complement the work of the police.
“We believe in community policing and already we have community policing in the state. We hope that along the line, it will go into state police,” the governor said.
He also noted that crime had reduced drastically in the state.
Mr Sule’s comments come days after he and the governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, held several meetings with the view of curbing crisis and criminal attacks in the state.
His comments also comes barely two days after the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, declared Amotekun illegal.
Many have argued that the AGF was wrong to declare the security outfit illegal.
The Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum condemned Mr Malami’s pronouncement.
The forum said Mr Malami’s statement was in furtherance of the widely – held suspicion that sections of the country were deliberately being rendered vulnerable for herdsmen and other criminals by the federal government.
The Chairman of Nigeria Governors’ Forum, Kayode Fayemi, has also insisted that the police authorities specifically, were involved in the setting up of Amotekun. He said the South-West governors had made it clear that it was in response to the security challenge in the zone.
“The Amotekun vision is a logical end product of President Buhari’s compelling vision on community policing and bottom-up approach to security sector governance across the length and breadth of the country.
“Far from being a competitor with the existing national security platforms, it aims to complement them in the areas of neighbourhood watch, information and intelligence gathering, detection of early warning signs and engaging in early response in a pro-active manner, apart from acting as liaison between the conventional security outfits and the local population,” he said.
Credit: Premium Times
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