[dropcap]B[/dropcap]arely three months after his appointment as Lagos State Police Commissioner Imohimi Edgal, speaks to Chidiebere Onyemaizu, Bayo Bernard and Uche Nwosisi on the challenge of policing Nigeria’s Commercial capital. The suave speaking Lagos police boss opened up on how he led the team that cracked Badoo, the dreaded cult group that terrorized Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos for months. Excerpt:
Lagos is a peculiar state, it’s a mini Nigeria, and for a man to be posted to police the state is not an easy task. So, how has it been so far policing a culturally diverse state like Lagos, a mini Nigeria?
I must admit that it has been challenging. However, if you recall, Immediately I was appointed commissioner of police, I hit the ground running, I think the first thing a commissioner of police must do if you get to anew command is to reach out to the people to explain to them you policing plans for that state. Between when I came to the state, I and now, I have attended 11 town halls and security meetings, across the state, covering the length and breadth of Lagos state. And I have told the people my policing plan. My policing plan is powered by the philosophy and ideology of community policing and community partnership. I, indeed, and other senior police officers have come to realize that, we cannot seek to police the people and have safe neighborhood without the consent and participation of the people, who must be actively involved in policing their communities for obvious reasons.
Number one, the police does not have the required manpower, logistics and intelligence to take care of crimes in all neighborhoods in Lagos. And that is where an important element of community policing comes into play which is partnership.
We are therefore constrained to partner actively with the people. When you partner with the informal policing sector, for instance, the vigilante groups, such as the OPC, Onyeabor, Vigilante Group of Nigeria and other neighborhood security groups, they have better firsthand information about their communities. They know more, not only about the street networks, they also know more about the local black spots in their neighborhoods. So what I am seeking to do now is to partner with this groups, organize them, attach armed policemen with these groups to ensure that we have safer neighborhoods.
We have been able to take care of the major security challenges in Lagos, especially security challenges relating to our highways, major streets and all that. Where we are having problems now are the inner neighborhoods and those problems are neighborhoods robberies at night. On this neighborhood robberies I have come out with a strategy, which is based on functional partnership, a component of community policing whereby we set up strong vigilante groups, we attach policemen to them and they patrol neighborhoods at night between 12 midnight and 5 am to ensure that we wipe out residential robberies and Lagosians can indeed sleep with their two eyes closed.
And their windows and doors open if necessary. That is the intention and I must tell you that it has started to work. I would hand over to you the crime statistics, so that you can go through it, January to the end of October, you will see from the graph, you see a steady decline, especially a very sharp decline in crime between the month of September and October, when we rolled out the community policing and community partnership initiative in Lagos state.
That goes to show that the strategy is working. In various neighborhoods now from Ikorodu, Badagry, Epe, Alimosho, Lagos Island, issues of youth restiveness, cultism that most stakeholders complained about during our town hall meetings when I first got to Lagos state as Commissioner of Police, most of those issues are being tackled and the feedback from those communities is that they are now having reasonable respite. I promised that I will reduce crime rates and statistics show very clearly that crime rate is fast dropping in Lagos state. We intend to sustain this.
There are areas in Lagos that are the so called flash points. The complaint now is that those areas are going back to what they used to be. You have areas like Mushin, Ojuelegba, Oshodi etc. Oshodi, for instance was experiencing calmness, but the situation seems to have changed suddenly.
I don’t agree with you. I don’t know where you are getting your information and statistics from. I’m an officer that believes in statistics, with the report that comes to the command, I’m 70 percent sure. When you talk about report you must speak with statistics. All these places you are talking about they are areas that are from time immemorial known as traditional flash points and crime scenes. Even from when I was a kid. So let us speak with statistics. I took over in September, from then to October let’s see the statistics of crimes in the state and compare it with previous months before I rolled out the community policing and partnership strategy. Let’s compare Oshodi then and now.
About three weeks ago, the NURTW were here in my office. We held a meeting and had a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU. They have a task force that is working now with officers from Area F in Oshodi as I speak to you. So this initiative is not only that of the police. We have brought in the NURTW, bearing in mind that it’s their members, their hangers on that commit some of these minor crimes at Oshodi. And between when we set up this partnership and now we have arrested well over 375 notorious hoodlums from that axis alone.
So, this issue of traffic robbery has reduced in Oshodi. We had the same problem at Aponbgon/Iponri axis. Now we are working with local groups there, this time the Okada Union, because we discovered that in that axis most of these crimes are committed by this unregistered Okada riders. So there is a MoU between the Area A Commander and the Okada Union, that they patrol that Eko Bridge and Western Avenue, and they have been recording successes. One thing you must know about policing in Lagos is that it’s a continuous business, it’s 24/7 business.
Why it is continuous? As I’m speaking to you now the number of people that are coming into Lagos on an hourly basis, is astronomical. Lagos is a state that is working. So people are trooping into Lagos, and when more come in it stretches security, apart from stretching our manpower and logistics and assets, you have more security concerns. I’m not saying that crimes have been completely wiped out in those areas. I’m saying that with effective strategy and response put in place, we are getting feedbacks. I don’t work without feedback, and that’s why I hold town hall security meetings regularly so that people can give me feedback. How are your neighborhoods, is it working? Are the police working and so on and so forth.
Recently, I was speaking with s friend who resides in Ikorodu and he told me they now sleep with their two eyes closed, windows open, even their doors open, no more fear of Baddoo. And you made it happened. What was the magic? You even went ahead to destroy some shrines
It’s the grace of God; I did not make it happen. It was a collective effort. You will recall that when I was Deputy Commissioner of Police, Operation, when this problem assumed a dangerous, frightening dimension, I sat down and thought, I said to myself, how we handle a problem that has both physical and spiritual dimensions. And I said ok the only way we can tackle it is to invoke that element of community policing that has to do with ownership. A lot of my colleagues said then that no if you call Gani Adams, they will not honor your call, they don’t have good working relationship with the police, and I said no, it depends on how you present your plans to people. I made a call to all stakeholders, including other security agencies. The turn out in the office was very massive and shocking everybody was there on time even before time.We sat down with other security agencies: the military, Civil Defense, Lagos state Neighborhood Corps, all of them, the informal policing sector. OPC led by Gani Adams was personally present, Onyeabor, Vigilante Group of Nigeria, all of them were at the meeting.
We sat together, we deliberated for two full days, without sleep and we came up with a MoU, and we moved into Ikorodu. Today, the rest is history. The people of Okorodu when they saw the seriousness on our part, the traditional institution on Ikorodu, now partner with me to ensure continued success.
Most of the information and some of the actions were based on credible information and intelligence from eminent persons. There is no way a policeman will know there is a shrine in thick forest in Ikorodu or Agbowa, and that is why community policing comes in, that’s where community safety partnership comes in. I always tell my officers you cannot police the people without their consent, their trust to us is very vital. Once you can win the trust, consent and confidence of the people it allows for inflow of information that ordinarily you will not get. When you win the trust and confidence of the people to recognize you as a professional officer, an officer who will not compromise on such information, they will be ready to work with you. I’m happy for the peace in Ikorodu but, we will remain vigilant because this is a fight between good and evil. And you cannot tell me that evil will cease to exist. The fight is a continuous one.
The police over time have been at the receiving end of public outrage for good or for bad. Sometimes the police is also a victim of its own doing. How can the police be fixed vis-a-vis restoring the image of the force, for instance, if you go to police stations you see “bail is free” posters, but in actual sense is not. In most cases, you are compelled to pay certain amount of money before making a statement. What instruction are you giving to your men in the field?
When you talk about Nigerian Police Force, what you are talking about is not peculiar; it’s a well-known fact that any police force that does not have a philosophy will always have issues of public acceptability, trust and confidence. Hitherto, the police did not have a clear-cut policing philosophy and ideology, if you remember, recently, the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris launched a Community Policing and Safety Partnership in Abuja. Now the official policing strategy for the Nigerian Police Force is community partnership and safety partnership. Most of the problems we’ve been having are as a result of disconnect… we did not have close relationship with the people we are supposed to police. No ground flow of information. The people don’t trust us, they don’t know our intention, and we were not involving them in our policing plans. Meanwhile, the neighborhood belongs to them; they know the problems, so now we have changed strategy. What we are doing now is that we are reaching out to them; we are sitting with them to jointly identify the problems. We are sitting with them now to find solutions to those problems. If you jaw-jaw with the people and they agree with you that this is their problem, and you sit with them to fashion out solutions to the problem, while carrying out strategies to carry out the solutions, even when there are short-comings they understand with you, they won’t criticize you for those shortcomings. Before we were policing as a function, our policing was reactionary in nature, as we are sitting here we heard they are robbing at Ile Zik, we carry our guns and run there, that’s policing as a function.
We are now doing policing as a process, we now try to be pro-active to put in place structure, that we prevent the occurrence of crime, because we have partnered with the people and we know that these are the crimes in the neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods have different problem. My town hall meetings have made all the policemen in Lagos know that each community has a peculiar problem, if you police as a function, you drive two patrol vehicles and you pack them there, you are taking care of the security need of the people. When I went to Isolo, Kabiyesi, the Oba of Isolo told me that their problem is youth restiveness and cultism. I went to another area it’s the issue of proliferation of drug abuse. I went to another area they informed me that their problem is rape, that their daughters are being raped.
My policing attention for those areas now is to divert equipment and manpower based on their problems. And that’s why I’m saying to my DPOs and Area Commanders, if I just send patrols vehicles there I’m not solving their problems. You will see now that we have imbibed community policing and partnership ideology that within the next six months or a year the criticism of the police will drop. Already in Lagos the crime rates have started dropping. You know that we have a monitor in Abuja, a group set up by the police to report police conduct.
They forward these complaints to the Commissioner of Police with query. What I did when I got here, I set up a citizen’s complain center. When I was Assistant Commissioner of Police, Operations the state government assisted me to set up an Intelligence Laboratory at Alausa. This citizen’s complaint center is domiciled at the intelligence Lab at Alausa. I got 10 dedicated lines: 08067945274, 08063104759, 08063025274,081136615350 ,08113683077, 08096283148, 080962283173, 08089781657 , 08126404930, 08081426895 and I put them out there at the public domain. The center is manned 24/7. You call in in Hausa Yoruba, Igbo English and pidgin English. They are simply lines to report police conduct. If you will still be here I will ask my officers to bring in reports from citizen’s complaint center that I established.
I am now getting some breather from Abuja, because people are no longer sending complaints there, they are sending them here and we are nipping them in the bud.
You can imagine a complaint sent to Abuja and it’s now reassigned back to the commissioner of police to deal with, a reasonable time would have passed and the problem would have even become worse. So I’m saying that policing philosophies, structures and strategies determine the acceptability the police will get from the people. Now we are involving the people in our policing plans, you don’t go to the neighborhoods and see police patrolling at night without the vigilantes. Some people just left my office somewhere in a community after Ajah, they said they have formed their own vigilante group. They wanted my ID card or the DPO’s, I told them you don’t need my ID card, I have told the DPOs and Area Commanders, that they should go there and meet him that you are a vigilante group after profiling them, it’s compulsory that he attached armed men with them to patrol the community.
So the vigilante groups are allowed to carry arms?
They are not allowed by law to carry arms. You cannot see any vigilante carrying arms. Our laws do not accept that. If you see any person carrying arms, it must be a double barrel, licensed for gaming purpose, hunting, it’s not for self-protection. So vigilante group carry arms, policemen are attached to them and this partnership is working. The police is becoming more accepted in Lagos.
We observe recently that some policemen are attached to quasi-military bodies like LASTMA, Taskforce, at a time when there are suggestions that Lagos with over 20 million people is under-policed. So how many policemen are left to protect the people and what are you doing to check the excesses of these policemen, particularly the TaskForce due to many complaints against them?
Let me take the first one. Now all these units that you are talking about have specific functions. Let’s start with LASTMA, you will agree with me that the police do not have the required equipment and personnel to take care of the whole gamut of traffic problems in the state, it’s not possible, and so LASTMA was a welcome development. LASTMA as an agency don’t carry arms, they don’t even have an enforcement unit, and we know that traffic management sometimes requires some enforcement. It’s our job to protect such groups for effective performance in the interest of Lagosians. And that’s why policemen are attached to them.
Now, these policemen attached to them are headed by senior police officers. So the same police regulations, mode of operations, apply to them, even though they are attached to these quasi bodies. And the same standard disciplinary actions are applied to them. And if you look at LASTMA for instance, we have a Superintendent of police, who is a senior officer, his mates are DPOs. So we are looking at policemen attached to LASTMA being headed by an officer who ordinarily should be a DPO because he has the required rank. It’s his job to check their excesses and discipline them whenever they are at fault or misbehave.
However, what I’m saying now is dovetailing into your second question. How do you now check their excesses? I agree with you absolutely that when performing some of these jobs, you will notice some excesses. The excesses are as a result of bad experiences. The last time we have a major raid of motorcycles along Mile 2 expressway, one of the security agencies in Lagos state joined hand with hoodlums to attack the policemen and seized back the motorcycles that have already been loaded into the truck, broke the windscreen of the police truck, and we have to get reinforcement there to arrest over 24 hoodlums including the people we now identified as serving security agents, probably because they bought those motorcycles and gave them to people to do business.
So, we too have our challenges. Where policemen believe there is imminent danger, they might want to maneuver out of the place and in so doing they exhibit some of these excesses. So while I’m not excusing that, sometimes it’s some of these experiences that made them behave like that. But the good thing I did when I came to the state is that I gave Lagosians a platform to report police conduct. What they had been complaining about is that there was no platform. Now if you go to a police station, at the Charge Room where you lodge a complaint, and a policeman or woman tells you before you lodge a complaint: I want to track your vehicle, do XYZ,bring money, just step aside and call any of those numbers.
You go upstairs to the DCB branch you want to take somebody on bail and they give you conditions not prescribed by police regulation, no argument step aside and call any of those numbers even at night and see the magic it will work. If you give members of the public a platform if they are using the platform, if the policemen are realizing that their misconduct are reported to that platform and actions are being taken, their conducts begin to change. I’m getting few complaints now through that platform, when we first opened that platform; the complaints were coming in droves. But no policeman wants to lose his job. We have over 24 policemen undergoing different kinds of trials now, downstairs in our provost department, all through that platform, some will be dismissed, and some will have reduction in ranks. While we are not happy as senior police officers to begin to demote or dismissed our junior ones but, I told my men ‘it cannot be business as usual’. The new ideology and philosophy of the Force that was launched by the IGP is community policing and Safety Partnership and the key word there is partnership. The citizens of Lagos will not partner with you except you can win back their trust and confidence. If you are a professional, how do you win back trust and confidence? And that’s at the heart of checking my policemen, because I want to leave behind a legacy of institutionalized philosophy of community policing and safety partnership. That’s the legacy I want to leave behind. That’s what I, Edgar wants to be known and remembered for.
culled from The Source Magazine