Garba Shehu, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President has alleged that most states clamouring for community policing can’t pay salaries.
This allegation was made by the presidential spokesman while appearing on a Channels Television programme on Tuesday, August 25.
Shehu who noted that there is a standard national procedure and prescription for each state to comply with.
Shehu added that the inability of some states to pay salaries made the approval for community policing take so long to come.
He said;
“For President Muhammadu Buhari, the concern has always been about the spread and abuse of weapons in the hands of police.
“He said repeatedly that, look, a lot of the states that had clamoured for state police, many of them are unable to cope with salary payment. If you hire a community policeman and give him a gun, and keep him for five, six months without salary, what do you expect? Efforts have been taken so that situations of this kind do not arise. So, therefore, there is a standard national procedure and prescription for each of the states to comply with.”
Garba Shehu further disclosed that the localized police cannot operate outside the structures laid down by the police authorities.
He said;
“Whatever name they go by, Amotekun or whatever, they will be streamlined and they will be run in accordance with the structure as defined by the inspector-general of police.
“They will be localised, they will be owned by local communities, they will be managed by them. You know, the constitution of the committee has been defined to include council chairmen, religious leaders, traditional leaders, civil society groups and all of that.
“They can choose their own nomenclature but it doesn’t make a difference. There is a general structure for all state and local council community policing mechanisms and this should abide in the states.
“So, we are going to have a single type structure community policing across the country and whatever is not in line with this does not have a place in the new scheme of things.”
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