By Ifeoma Ikem
Groups of human right,businessmen and stakeholders are calling on federal government and the police authority to train and retrain operatives of the Special Anti Robbery Squad SARS rather than disbanding the unit
Human right groups spoke on recent killings of innocent Nigerians by conventional policemen who are not SARS operatives which was one of the alleged reasons for the call to disband SARS.
Barrister Agnegbodo Bartholomew a Lagos based lawyer said “I am for SARS reform. SARS reform in the sense that most of the killings ascribed to SARS of recent are not done by SARS operatives.
Nigerians mistake all policemen in uniform as Special Anti Robbery Squad (SARS). One thing that is glaring is that, there are provisions within the Police Act and our Criminal Code to take care of any policeman that misbehaved and those who take the life of innocent Nigerians.
There is increase in crime of recent since the agitation to scrap the unit began and unprecedented rising in criminalities in Nigeria.
Citizens are been attacks by robbers on daily basis, report of car snatching, missing of children and kidnapping have returned.
Speaking further, Barr. Bartholomew said “My take on the issue is that SARS unit need to be train and reform, If there’s bad egg among them the authority should use internal mechanism to fish them out and carry out a reorientation for serving officer.
The reorientation to uphold the civil norms in policing should be encouraged. There should be constant retraining on the use of fire arms to avoid the incident of extra judicial killing in the cause of operation.
As regard their functions, we can not shut our eyes to the over bearing functions of men of the SARS.
Another lawyer cum Security Expert, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Concentric Security, Barr. Amali Adoya Amali said the entire Nigeria police Force need to undergo reform.” I will not advocate for the scrapping of SARS. Police extra judicial killing is a general police problem. Look at the killing of the football fan in Lagos, that was not done by SARS. Another killing of the Civil Defence officer Jombo in Abuja recently was SARS. I believe there has been sanity in SARS since the reform. They should focus on robbery and there is need for continued training and retraining of all the policemen”.
However, reducing criminal in our environment regular policemen can do it alone because the fear of SARS speaks volume to security in securing lives and properity.
The absence of the unit for some months when they are ask to return to their bases has worsen the security situation in Nigeria.it is not far fetched that those who one way or the other are beneficiary of the rising crime, or have skeleton in their cupboard, are those calling for scraping of SARS”
A business man,Mr John Okoli said, “We can not overemphasized the importance of SARS in reducing crime.Government should reform the outfit not scrap it”
A security expert,who speak uncondition said that ” the recent killings by police in Lagos reveal was not SARS operatives but members of the society attribute all police bad behavior to SARS. The opeatives are well behaved and they are doing well.
You will be amazed at the caliber of guns recovered from miscreanst, thugs and robbers in the society by SARS. Presently, SARS is one of the police security outfit who has the heart to withstand the heat of any form of violence or criminal activities .
Previously Lagos was calm, due to the firm stand of SARS were robbers find it diffcult to operate but now robbers reappear again,we know they are good and bad ones but the authority should do needful and encourage the good ones instead of condemning them to give the bad element grace to strive in our society.
Generally SARS officer are doing a good job in keeping crime at it’s lowest but there is need to be a form of reorientation among officers in carrying their duty.
Sahara weekly learnt that SARS is training and retraining their men which has yielded positive result .