FORMER IGP SOLOMON ARASE, EXPRESSES SUPPORT FOR ‘AMOTEKUN’ AND COMMUNITY POLICING
By Trek Africa Newspaper
Former IGP Solomon Arase
Speaking yesterday, February 7, 2020, at the 4th annual public lecture of United Action for Change (UAC), Solomon Arase, a former Inspector General for Police, expressed his support for ‘Amotekun’ and local policing in Nigeria. “Amotekun is good,” Mr. Arase said. “We have experimented it before in the North-Central when a group known as the G7 put together a community vigilante group to deal with the crisis and it worked.”
The former Chief of Police however warned that arming local security groups like ‘Amotekun’ should be properly thought through so as to avoid creating another problem of its own. “Otherwise,” Mr Arase argued, “that is the way to go.”
Mr. Arase, speaking further at the event, frowned at the manner in which police officers round innocent Nigerians up and display them before the media without any evidence of committing crime. He said “this usually happens when police commands are under pressure from their bosses to deliver results and so they take the easy way out to convince the public that they are working. It is a police strategy but it is a bad strategy because you can end up radicalizing innocent citizens who mix up with criminals in detention.”
The former IG advocated for intelligence-led policing where the police works hard to gather evidence before making an arrest or parading any suspect. “That is why during my time as IG, I always made it clear that you must have evidence before you make any arrest.”
