Kayode Egbetokun,New Police Inspector General of Police (IGP), has vowed to make community policing work.
The new police boss assumed office at the Police Force Headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, June 21 taking over the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force from retired IGP Usman Baba.
IGP Egbetokun warned police officers that he won’t tolerate abuse of office, corruption and misconduct adding that the salaries of constables are already being looked into and will be paid by month end.
“Apart from technical intelligence, we are also going to rely so much on human intelligence available in our communities. We are going to be proactive in our approach to solving our community problems,” he said.
As part of its efforts to make community policing work, the administration of then President Muhammadu Buhari in August 2020 approved the sum of N13.3bn for the take-off of community policing initiative across the country but some challenges have encumbered the implementation of the initiative.
Acknowledging the challenges in the implementation of the initiative, the new IGP said they would be resolved in order for community policing to work.
“On community policing, there is a lot that we are going to do differently in the implementation of the community policing strategies that we are operating presently.
“I discussed that with the retiring IG, my predecessor just before we came here and he told me all the problems we are facing with the implementation of the community policing strategies. We are not going to set it aside, we are going to continue with it but we are going to review a lot of things. We are going to make it work.”
“We all need to collaborate together to be able to surmount the security challenges facing our country today. It is going to a collective responsibility. All of us will be involved; everybody will be a policeman. We are going to partner with every group, every law-abiding individual.”
