IGP Adopts Community Policing

The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Kpotum Idris says his adoption of community policing is aimed at soliciting the support of traditional rulers and their subjects in the fight against crime.
Idris disclosed this in his keynote address delivered at the 9th General Assembly, of the National Council of Traditional Rulers of Nigeria (NCTRN), Port Harcourt last Tuesday.
The Police boss said community policing involved the engagement and partnership of the community in the systematic examination of identified and identifiable problems in the community and proffer solution to effectively deal with the problems.
He opined that it had been his desire to engage traditional rulers and their institutions in prevention and detection of crime because of their role in the security architecture of the country.
“The traditional rulers as the custodian of culture of the people are the closest to the people, they know their people and their people know them,” he said.
“Traditional rulers command respect in their various communities, their subjects value them and they value their subjects, they know the forests and they can command their subjects and hunters to patrol and secure the forests,” he added.
Idris said he would continue to seek their co-operation to assist the police with useful information on crime and criminality in their localities, stressing that “Traditional rulers can prevent crime if they speak against it in their communities.”
The Inspector General of Police however appealed to them to also support the police with logistics as the regular budgetary allocations to the police was not sufficient to meet their needs pointing out in 2017, only about N10 billion was released to the police for both capital and overhead cost, and the amount was a far cry from the amount estimated to make the police effective.
He however hoped that with the Police Trust Fund Bill when passed into law would adequately address the funding of the police and Nigeria Police would be the best in the world.