Sir, you achieved a lot last year in crime fighting, what do you have in store this year to consolidate on 2009?
My zone comprises of Lagos and Ogun State, it is very complex, very delicate and challenging zone in the area of safety and security of lives and property of individuals and we thank God that in 2009 we were able to achieve much in the area of crime control and management which to the fact that crime has been reduced to the barest minimum because of certain strategies put in place and the strategies are not far fetched from the fact that we decided to be thorough in our management style in our methodology of fighting crime and introduced new strategies by taking the fight to the criminals hideout and their dens. You don’t wait for criminals to come out looking for fertile ground to operate that is intelligence network policy, information management and control through the assistance and support of the citizens of this state both Lagos and Ogun and equally through the assistance and support of state government, both state have done very well in terms of support to the police commands and you are aware that Lagos have even surpassed where other states stopped by providing two helicopters to be used for crime control, traffic control and management and disaster management itself. This is an added advantage to Lagos and that is why we would continue to be grateful to the governor of Lagos state who is very passionate about crime control and management and is very particular and he feels that he has that social responsibility which had been given to him constitutionally to protect lives and property and I do say that anybody who is a leader is not only given a constitutional responsibility, he is given a duty by God to discharge to his people and we are happy that governor Fashola is one such governor we can to talk about at any given time , he is there for us 24/7 and opens his door whenever we knock.Do you also receive the same co-operation from his counter-part in Ogun State?
Ogun State is equally putting their best in terms of support to the police command, giving vehicles and other logistics support but you have to look at the two states competitively, look at the areas of interest, they are not same, the complicity of these two places could be similar but Lagos being the hub, nerve center, commercial center of this country in west Africa then we have the sea borders, air border and land border and so it is somehow problematic and this is where you have all the residences of all the offices of embassies, the biggest companies and they have their offices here in Lagos so we should expect that Lagos should be more in terms of the challenges of day-to-day policing and more importantly we look at the population, we are talking about 18-20million, so it is not a small city you can talk about anywhere in the world compare to Ogun state where the population is less and the challenges are not going to be the same with that of Lagos. If you compare the two, Ogun have equally done their best in terms of supporting the police but you cannot compare it with Lagos that has additional fleet of helicopters, marine port and the rest of them.
In the area of logistics, would you say you actually have enough to carryout your duty?
Well, you see the word enough is in relative term depending on what you mean by enough, human beings must times don’t get enough of ideally what they want, in the security challenges of what we have of today, we can say comfortably we have tools that we can be able to face challenges of the day-to-day policing and you can see how we are able to equally do those things we are suppose to do in terms of fighting crime gradually and achieving the result. Actually, the equipments we have are good enough; the federal government too has done much more in terms of providing the fire fighting which the state could not provide. When I was commissioner of police in Lagos, initially you find that policemen go to work with 45 rounds of live ammunitions the reverse is the case now, we upgraded it to 60 rounds of live ammunitions and ensured that no policeman go less than 30 lives of round of ammunitions to any operation.
So you are confidently saying that your men are well equipped to fight criminals.
I underline the word ‘Well equipped’, crime is a very dynamic thing and so to do with equipment scientifically, so everyday you are talking about modernization, you can see we have the AK-47 and there is AK-49 in the making, so, there is nothing wrong in having to see a policemen well kitted with walkie-talkie, with a cell phone, with his riffle and well dressed so that he can earn the respect that he is suppose to get because the police is the symbol of the state, executive of any particular country of the world because that is the only way you can feel and see government when law enforcement are executed rightly and fairly without fear or favor. You can say, we have equipment to face the challenges of day-to-day crime otherwise we wouldn’t have been where we are today.
Are there new strategies you are putting in place in addition to the one you have before to combat crime apart from armed robberies?
There are strategies, you know strategies are always kept in the safe because am sure as you can see how we even learn from what we see and from nature, we want to keep the strategies to our self, yes there are strategies without strategies you cannot achieve what we have achieved. We have a work plan for 2010 and our work plan for 2010 that I can be able to reveal now is (1) the police in this zone intend to be more proactive, we intend to police by objective and give support and communicate more with the communities who we serve and we intend to extend a hand of relationship to the people of this zone and of this country and we as the police officers of the zone, it is our objective and plan to ensure because we have started a training late last year for human rights cases to ensure that our officers and men realize that we are servant of the people and if we are suppose to serve, we must serve well, we should do it in a manner that is expected of us, we have a constitutional responsibility, we must be fair, firm and without fear or favour to anybody and this we want to ensure that it is done.
And that is why late last year we had conferences and seminars, our assistant commissioners of police, area commanders in charge of investigation department so that we can be able to tell them the nitty-gritty of what we expect from them, so that it can go down the ladder and we equally did another seminars for the rank and file because they are the people we see daily on the street, to me they are the greatest human beings we have in the service because they are very dear to us, they are the true soldiers that we use on a daily basis and the image they make for the police is very key and important to us and we are beginning to look at the menaces of what we see on the road, am talking about the area of bribery and corruption and I do know that bribery and corruption is a two way street, Nigerians are very gullible when it comes to things of this nature. Your men are on the road collecting money, who is giving them money, monkey or animals, we all need to ask such question, if it takes two to tangle the giver and the taker are guilty of the same offence committed but I think on our own we have not been able to most times charge the givers to court because what we do is to go round and we anticipate that if we see swizzed money ordinarily unexpected of you , we will think and assume you must have collected the money from members of the public which means we have conflict, no service in this country, no organization in this country including yours that have furnish their staff the way we do, get them arrested, detain them, try them, dismiss them and charge them to court, only the Nigerian police does this, if every organization takes this challenges the way we do and fight it the way we are fighting it then I think the cases of bribery and corruption will reduce drastically. We cannot exterminate corruption because is synonymous with the society and everywhere in the world you have cases of corruption it all depends on how it is done, the police probably come to the glare of the public because we are the closest organization to the people all over the world and we cannot change this, the manner and way you do it is what matters but we are not only looking at the matter but we are saying it must be stopped and we are making efforts. Successive Inspectors Generals of Police have done all this include the present IG, he has started monitoring units in all the zones and they go out to check and ensure that people are not being harassed, we had times in this country where photographs of officers and men who collected money were shown on televisions and on the pages of newspapers, this is all ways of ensuring that look, you should be shameful, if you families and friend see you then we do it to equally ensure that it deter others from doing it but human beings what they are and I do say anybody, it is not the manner of salary you pay the individuals that matters it is the individual himself.
How do you intend monitoring some people who put on police uniform to commit some of these crimes?
It is not that we do not monitor, we do, we have what is called the escort, the monitoring unit but do remember that, if Nigerians decide on their own, the worse place anybody we want to take you to is the police station, he will tell you ,you have committed a crime he takes you to the police station but why should Nigerians commit the crime themselves you cannot commit in England, Niger, if today there is motor traffic check, you will find thousands of Nigerians do not obey the law but they blame the police, check their cars, you will discover that their drivers license, vehicle license have expired. Those people who cannot call anybody to save them, the bad policeman on the road capitalize on that situation and collect money but assuming that that individual has done what he is suppose to do there would be no opportunity for him to collect money. They write one way, you are driving on a traffic you are in a hurry, you say my wife has just delivered, is that the reason why you should take one way? Or oga am just in a hurry to get to the office, is not enough, so if the police talk to you, you have two options, either to follow the law and follow him to the police station where they will give you paper to say come back tomorrow, take you car, particulars and give you a small retention note as we call it traffic wise so that you can be able to come back tomorrow and be charged to court but the individual does not want to be charged to court and in the process of even taking the paper if he has one, you find that the license is expired, the insurance is expired, he has no driver’s license and additional charges will be added, you weigh the options, this man is only asking for N1,000 if I go to court how much would they have charged me after conviction which means that you have convicted for traffic offense and more importantly he has wasted his time, the implication of this is that the individual is a law breaker, so, some of the bad policemen capitalize on this situations but my appeal here is, why cant every Nigerians be a good citizen and patriotic citizen of this country, I have a car I renew my license, do my insurance, do my vehicle license, change my tyres, my trafickators are working well, fire extinguisher in the car, am sure if will check all these in your car they are not there and therefore the policeman will have that opportunity because a police constable who you think is not educated is educated to know his job that is fine for us, if he is educated to know his job to say that your fir extinguisher is not there, some people will say what is your business with that, the extinguisher is a key component of the vehicle, it is his business because if there is a disaster, how do you save him and others? Your tyres are worn-out; they would say the policeman is looking for money, it is not you that matters to us but others because you have already decided to kill yourself by using worn-out tyres, so we protect other road users, this are issues that are very, very key.
How would you describe police community relationship?
I think in the area of Lagos and Ogun states it is working well because in the pass it was difficult for people to come and give you information but I think it has improved very, very tremendously. Though have seen occasions were people work to our offices, walk into CPS office and DPO’s office and tell them ABCD has happened and under that confidentiality we treat it very well. But the wrong thing is when you see a police constable walking on the street and you now run to him and say please Oga, we get armed robbers there, I mean it doesn’t make a lot of sense but when you go and confine to a senior officer in the office because cases of robbery and information you are going to give is very, very sensitive, and therefore it should be treated with some level of secrecy.
No comments:
Post a Comment