By Ifeoma Ikem
Groups of joint security agencies have called on the Federal Government to factor in retired police officers in the modern day security management.
This appeal was made during a security management intelligence summit 2020 in Lagos State on Thursday.
Former Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG), Israel Ajao, Chairman of Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps (LNSC) and also chairman of the occasion said in his goodwill message that security challenges is everyone’s business and all hands most be on desk to fight the course.
According to him, “In Lagos today, if anything goes wrong in the 57 LGAs and LCDAs, I get to know, there is no magic about it, it is because of intelligence gathering, it is because of community policing, it is because of partnership and getting everybody involved. There is no magic about policing. That can be adopted all over and I am very optimistic our problems will be solved.
He noted that, “He didn’t remember when last a bank was attacked in Lagos or any armed robbery attack cases in the state. It has come down drastically, the opportunity to do it and do it successfully is almost zero in Lagos.
He advised state and federal government to engage the retired police officers in crime fighting especially community policing because they have the skill and knowledge.
The summit which was jointly organised by the Eagle Crime Awareness and Prevention Initiative (ECAPI) and the Association of Retired Police Officers of Nigeria (APRON) Lagos State chapter.
The Chairman of APRON, Mr. A Essiet, said that our retired police officers would have been relevant in today’s security arrangement even as the nation spent huge sum of money to train them abroad but when they retired they went with the knowledge and experience required.
He added that Nigeria government should find a way to make these highly trained individual officers relevant in the modern day security arrangement.
In a paper titled:”Enhancing the potential of retired officers towards intelligent gathering and crime prevention”, he pointed out that every January 15th, the nation celebrate the Nigeria’s military, what has come of the retired police officers?
Also speaking, Mrs. Greg Cynthia, the Managing Director Safety Signature Ltd, said it is a welcome development for such summit like this because it will go a long way to assist the Nigeria police force to engage retired police officers within the community to assist in curbing any form of crime and criminalities within the various communities in community policing.
The convener, Mr. Samuel Eniola Adam, said in his speech that the goal of the ECAPI program is to make our neighbourhood safe and help to stop crime by obtaining information leads from community members. And after processing the information obtained, it is therefore passed to the relevant security agency for action