The Inspector- General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Adamu, on Wednesday appeared before the Senate over the implementation of a community policing policy that would involve governors and traditional institutions and groups in the provision of security.
Recall that Adamu was earlier invited by the Senate to explain the police “concept and implementation modalities of community policing policy” as part of efforts to curb the deteriorating security situation.
Adamu, at the meeting told newsmen: “If you can remember, last year, we sensitised the country on the need to adapt community policing and the concept is to give policing back to the community.
“Let the community take the initiative in identifying the problems that are there that can lead to the commission of crime and the we work with the community to solve the crime.
“We believe that everybody comes from a community and the community is a community you know who and who is there. Taking policing back to the community will help in reducing crime to the barest minimum.
“So, I have explained the concept of community policing to the Senate, which involves partnership with communities and there are various communities.
“You can have traditional institutions as a community. You can have the National Union of Road Transport Workers as a community. You can have the media as a community and various communities that you can have partnership with.
“If you are talking about partnership, we are talking about problem solving. We need to solve problems that evolve in the community.
“What we mean here is that we scan the community to find out what are the indices that can lead to the commission of crime or a crime that has been committed already.
“We analyse the problems and then, we look for solutions and the responses that are available. Then, we deploy resources to deal with the problems and then, subsequently, we re-evaluate all our responses to see how we can adjust to solve the problem.
“And in doing this, we need to capacitate our officers to key into the process. This is essentially what I explained to the Senate.”
The police boss urged governors and chairmen of local government areas to take responsibility in tackling insecurity in their domains instead of leaving everything to security agencies.