Acting Inspector-General of Police Usman Baba Alkali has said that last year’s #EndSARS protests weakened the capacity of the police to battle insecurity.
He added that the scrapping of the Special Anti-Robbery Squard (SARS), “created a vacuum” in the operations of the police.
He made this remark on Thursday at the Presidential Villa during a weekly briefing organised by the Presidential Communications Team.
Recall that Nigerians have been attacking men of the police over attack from gunmen who target their men and assets
The IG said: “The morale of our personnel has been a little bit dampened since the ENDSARS came and went away. With the proscription of SARS and the establishment of SWAT, which has not been able to take off fully, we had a vacuum in tackling most of the violent crimes from a position of strength in terms of having a strike force that is dedicated for that, rather than having our conventional police doing the policing in conventional way.”
The IG explained that “we try to marshal back this courage of our personnel who have been involved in violent crime and they lecture them and posted them to the anti-robbery sections, for anti-robbery patrols and the investigation of violent related crimes, which involved, of course robbery, kidnapping, banditry, cultism and so forth.
“Secondly, we decided to launch an operation, which is tagged Operation Restore Peace, and we targeted the Southeast and South-South for the first phase of your operation. We involved reinforcing these two zones with total number of about 3,700 policemen drawn from our various units, which include police mobile force, the strike force, counterterrorism, the STS, IRT and these commands were imposed with these personnel with specific instructions, with an operation order that is targeted at stabilising the incessant attacks on police facilities, personnel, military and other violent crimes”, he said.
He said: “I doubt if there is any state that does not have state police even now. What do I mean? There are creations that are done by state governments to assist law enforcement agencies in trying to maintain law and order, or enforce regulations or laws that are created by state governments.
“We have vigilante everywhere in this country. We have various types of organisations that have been created by state governments to assist in policing. Some of them had even House of Assembly laws that guide their operations. The space is open to everybody, we even always say, policing is not a matter of the Nigerian police, or the Nigerian law enforcement agents, everybody can be involved on policing.
“But I want to know the shape that the advocates of state police want it to take and it is an issue that is left for lawmakers and government.
“We are ready to work with anybody, we are ready to collaborate and synergize with anybody to make sure that Nigerian citizens enjoy the best of protection simple.
“State governments or state governors are chief security officers of their states. As far as I’m concerned, they are and remain one and my commissioners of police are ready to take all local instructions from them.
“As for agitation, it is there, but everybody is already involved in creating one agency or the other to compliment the efforts of the Nigerian security agencies. The National Assembly can look into the agitation, which is their own responsibility”, he said.
He added: “For record purposes, following the launching of Operation Restore Peace, we have so far recovered the following weapons and arms from secessionists and insurgents one general purpose machine gun, 10 AK 47 riffles, nine locally fabricate riffles, four locally fabricated pistols, 19 AK 47 magazines, 5419 live ammunition with 10 improvised explosive devices.
“In terms of arrests, we have 398 armed robbery suspects, 258 cult related offenders, 222 murder suspects, 202 bandits related suspects and 86 suspects involved in cases of kidnapping. 434 firearms of various descriptions were also recovered. These statistics are from 7th April till date.” he said.
