The Anambra State Command of the Nigeria Police Force in the past three months, has witnessed a restructuring, aimed at improving the security architecture in the state.
Its community-based approach has further unravelled the excesses in the state’s vigilantes group services, a situation the State’s Commissioner of Police, CP Nnaghe Itam who took over the command over 12 weeks ago, is making an effort to change.
In this interview with Nneoma Benson of NewsNGR, Itam highlighted the outcome of these approaches within the period under review, the criminal elements among the state’s vigilante group and how the police are curbing cultism-related activities in the state. EXCERPTS:
What are the crime trends in Anambra State and how have they evolved in the past years?
Complaints bordering on contestations on land snowballed into issues of murder, kidnapping, and communal agitations between traditional rulers and president-generals of town unions. In some cases, the involvement of various vigilantes in the fight for who controls the economic resources of communities and the revenues derived away from land and the markets.
Another situation is the preponderance of the agitations for a self-actualisation of the IPOB/ESN elements who perpetrate a lot of kidnappings in the areas around Ihiala, Umunze and so on, those places are like hotspots for now, and there are challenges around there.
However, we have ongoing joint military operations involving the army, police, and other sister security services around those areas.
We made sure there is a Forward Operation Base (FOB) at Ukpo, in Nnewi South, and another at Umunze, Agauta, and Uli, those are the axes where we still have some of the flash spots of ESN Camps.
Are they yielding results?
Of course, they are. The achievements are there. There were a lot of communities that people couldn’t return to, but all over the state now, people are turning back to their place.
As I said, we still have incidents around Ihiala and Nnewi, predominantly because the numbers of people who belong to these groups from those areas are very high and the people are afraid.
Notably, there’s nothing like unknown gunmen, these men are their brothers, friends, husbands and fathers. The people come in and go out knowing the potential for the viciousness of violence and the actions associated with these out-law groups.
However, we are working with local vigilantes, and town unions while looking at the future, where some will willingly surrender their arms.
It is important to note that nobody will want you to mention anybody’s name because it’s not a government amnesty.
If you say someone has come out, the propensity for their colleagues who are still in the trenches to take on them and kill them is there so some do it quietly. So, I can’t give you the number. Those are the basic challenges around.
What are the command’s efforts towards clamping down on cult-related activities in the state?
Some of the activities surrounding cultism, particularly areas that are predominantly inhabited by students are where you find student-related cultism activities by those who stay out of school; beyond that sometimes they go to snatch phones. We have that, and we are dealing with it.
The other part of the cultism is community-related. As I speak, we have been having outreaches to sensitise Awka communities about why youths should resist cult-related activities because of their negative consequences, and there’s been a good response.
As part of my engagement from the first week I came here, what I tried to do was to leverage all those who are in security activities like the vigilantes.
Everybody in the state believes that you need to go to an herbalist or a shrine for charms to be invincible to metals, arms and guns, and it’s like a cultural thing here. Every vigilante group has its herbalists or shrines and those are the things that predispose the youths here to cultism.
So, you have that feeling of invisibility because you have gone through a ritual or a native doctor. Those of them who are vigilantes also have different native doctors.
Those seeming loyalty to the sources of their so-called fetish trends is part of why you find some attempting to see who has more power than the other. Then you have this violence and killings amongst themselves, of which we are dealing with them.
I have met a lot of complaints within the three months, we may have spots of incidents here and there, but not in the terms and the descriptions that the media want everyone to believe.
Yes, it has not stopped completely, but I don’t think it’s as prevalent, because if you take for example the 12 weeks that I have been here, we have had less than five instances.
Nobody is saying that one is good enough, but if it appears that something is happening every minute, then nobody will be left in Awka.
What proactive strategies have you implemented in the past three months since you became CP In Anambra?
We have an Anti-Special unit that is tasked deliberately to deal with cult-related incidents. Apart from the enforcement that entails collecting intelligence about cult groups, we’ve made substantial arrests.
I know that there have been up to five occasions where we had more than six cultists arrested at the same time during initiations or meetings.
We had an issue in July where we had youths of less than 17, we only had one who was 18, and all the rest were less than 17, all cultists with arms.
Some of the arms are locally fabricated, and some pump action rifles, which, of course, they buy at shops licensed to sell in Onitsha. However, such a license becomes wrong when it gets into the wrong hands.
It appears the vigilante service is rooted in Anambra, has there not been recorded cases of clashes between police and vigilante?
Of course, before me is the state vigilante law booklet; we are asking for a review of the law to accommodate a variance of what we found − a seeming lack of control and supervision of the vigilantes because the law anticipates, or what is provided for is that the traditional rulers are responsible for vigilantes and it’s not right.
The Police Act, which is a federal law, provides that the supervision of vigilantes should be by the Divisional Police officers in the areas where these vigilantes exist.
Also, vigilantes are meant to be engaged in their communities not where you would find that people from Benue, Enugu, Kogi, Cross River, Ebonyi, and Akwa-Ibom are all engaged in vigilante services in different parts of Anambra State.
Are you saying that non-indigenes operating as vigilantes in the state would be disengaged?
I’m not saying they have to leave. The vigilante law has to be amended to accommodate this new character of the state vigilante service operatives because they have to be profiled.
Their identities have to be established; Their institutional employers, community, or estate employers must take responsibility for their identification and their surety, such that when they are needed, whether there are infractions or not, they can account for them.
However, you find the practice someone who is from Ebonyi would be working as a vigilante and when something happens, you wouldn’t find the person, and then the person goes away and when he feels that no one is looking for him again, he comes back.
So, the propensity for them to be involved in crimes alongside the so-called safety and security that they are meant to provide is there.
At least I have up to three instances where we have some detained at our rapid response unit and at the Anti-Kidnapping Unit these vigilantes who were found to be involved in kidnapping and robbery.
That is why one of the first things I did in the very first week I came was to organise a workshop for all the vigilante commanders in the entire state. That was my first outreach, under the very first five days I came here.
Why did you consider such an outreach pertinent?
It was important because they needed to know the rules of engagement as envisaged in their law. It does not align with the federal provisions.
They were not under the police and were behaving as if they were even police themselves. So, that was why I had to do that very quickly and mandated all the divisions in the command to begin the re-profiling of all the vigilantes, which is ongoing, as I speak.
As I speak, I still frequent Nnewi because that is where we have the highest number of vigilante groups, both in terms of the use of pump actions by the vigilantes and the number of personnel involved. Nnewi has about 3,000 vigilante members.
How would you describe your relationship with Anambra communities considering the lack of trust in the police?
Well, those are issues of perception. The police have a local and contact function. No matter the technology you leverage, if you must effect an arrest or apprehend an offender, you need to meet him in a locality.
So, the duty of the police beyond cooperation also requires active collaboration and participation of the communities.
Going forward, when the Police Act was reviewed, it created room for the Police Community Relations Committee (PCRC) and those committees are intended to provide leverage and a platform for all stakeholders in the community.
If you look at Anambra State, each community has five predominantly active groups: the traditional rulers, committees of president-generals, members of the societies, youths, vigilantes, women and market groups.
Now, the intendment of the PCRCs is that beyond cooperation, those committees should jointly determine the safety, security or policing needs of each community and develop projects and programs jointly to ensure that these communities are kept safe and secure.
Then, the committees also have oversight on the nature of policing within their areas to demand transparency and accountability in the management of law enforcement in their localities.
The committees are cascaded from the division to the area command to the state level, although they do not yet exist in the state.
However, regarding the sensitisation we have been into, I have printed out those parts of the Act and shared them with the traditional rulers, held meetings with traditional rulers of the different senatorial traditional zones, and given them these documents.
Also, we are looking at the second level, which is to have nominees from these communities, by then to have the committee set up and then inaugurated.
We are also looking at a state-wide security summit, which the state government will be involved in, where these issues will be presented at the public level for everybody to know
That is why for now, the interface with the state government is for the amendment of the vigilante law, so they don’t look as if they are coming at the backend after the things have been done.
There’s a committee working on it as I speak, and we hope that when these things are done and then we have the final state security architecture conference, we will see clearly what the traditional rulers, president generals, divisions and the other security agencies are meant to do.
When the functional differentiation is understood by everybody within the circles of where these intersections are, they can all have independence and the lines of collaboration are understood.
I think going forward, we will do better because one very strong point is that there’s no agency, like the police that has the capacity alone to deal with the security issues in the community.
How is the police handling the issue of touting and activities of overzealous tax enforcement agents that sometimes stir insecurity in places like Onitsha for instance?
It is important to understand that the entire Anambra State, apart from Anambra East, is like a marketplace. So, we demanded that the government directed the market unions to provide uniforms, particularly for those who push wheelbarrow and help bring traders loads from the markets to the roadside and that’s where all these problems come from.
I think a good one that the former government, led by Willy Obiano did was to provide public spaces or conveniences, particularly around the Onitsha area, and clear some of those places.
So, providing uniforms for those who help carry loads around the places and identifying them from the different sections of the market, I think, brought about some level of sanity.
I can’t take away the overzealousness of the government’s so-called task forces, some of whom are meant for environmental sanitation, and others to collect tax revenues because each market has its task force responsible for the daily, weekly, or monthly collection of tax. Everybody wants revenue.
Well, we are working with the state government to manage the IGR process, so it does not violate the rights of the people and create agitation and demonstrations.
I think the state government is making efforts at its level to formalise the processes for which these collections are made.
However, we have Divisional Police Officers in the surrounding areas and communities of Onitsha to ensure that when these issues come, they can react and manage them in a way that does not snowball into something else.
The police seem to have a negative reputation for unprofessionalism. How is the command managing police conduct in the state?
I won’t tell you that we would not have cases of police misconduct. It’s not possible anywhere that you will have humans deviate from rules, processes, and norms, as it were.
What I say to everybody is that beyond perception, no institution within Nigeria weeds itself off its bad eggs than the police. I can say that without thinking.
Within the police alone, you have the Provost Office, Crime Response Unit, Public Complaints Unit, Monitoring Teams, and SERVICOM among others.
Each of these units is available in the command, and their primary function is to ensure that the men can do what they are supposed to do.
The truth of our work in Nigeria is that the policing environment is very toxic. I don’t need to elaborate, but we do our best to make sure that we get our men to do what they’re supposed to do, not minding the challenges.
I think if you sound out orders for feedback on what is happening within the command, at least within the months I have been here, you may give us some credit that we’re doing a lot to get our policemen to be more civil and drive law enforcement.
This is why I keep hammering on training because the failure of law enforcement is the cause of insecurity. So, I mentor, advocate and drive that my men drive law enforcement.
Is the state not lacking in personnel due to this situation?
If you talk about personnel, you should also look at the number of vigilantes that we talked about, however, it is a condition that we’re looking to ensure that they will improve over time.
We are also hopeful that the state government will give us vehicles to work. In my short time here, I’ve repaired over 10 vehicles.
How have you been able to revive and sustain the morale of your personnel?
Very three simple ways: Being at the places they have been afraid to go. I’ve gone to all these places flying my flag, day and night.
Also, going to the operations myself and they are encouraged, and trained. I’ve done a lot of local training here. I try to raise the team as a striking arm; I have also gone to a range with them. So, it is ongoing. I try mentorship and talking to them.
This is the truth, if you don’t train, you shouldn’t be blamed. So, when you train, it helps. The mere courage to confront what you fear, for me, is more than 50 per cent of what a policeman means.
If you don’t dare to bolster authority you can’t enforce the law because the real truth is that, that is what provides the edge.
Otherwise, if you have 10 policemen with a crowd of 500 people, do you think that the 500 people cannot overpower them? However, it’s the courage to stand them and take authority.
So, courage is key, the competence, and then the character. I know there is a reputation, but the reputation is not the character.
There is what people think you are and there’s what you are, and a majority of the people who hear of what they think we are, when they come to deal with us, they see a dissonance between the perception of the police reputation and what the police are.
So, the police can deliver on their duties by mere encouragement, appreciation, change in the standard of leadership, and the other things we do in the subculture of policing.
Once people are willing to offer rewardable kindness deliberately, they work better and that’s the environment I have tried to provide for the officers in the three months I’ve been here, and we hope to improve as the days go by.
However, I won’t talk about welfare because it is the IGP that has a say as regards welfare, but within the realms of what we can do and collaborating with the state government, the police function on goodwill.
What is the police’s relationship with the state government in ensuring that security thrives in the state?
We are a federal police, but without the state governments, the police can’t work. So, our relationship with the state government is good.
How do you unwind despite the herculean task of policing the state?
Unfortunately, I always work; however, I do a lot of community service, which is how I unwind. I do a lot of public speaking engagements or conferences.
I am also a pastor. I write but have yet to publish. I do a lot of social work as well. I sing and dance and that is for the pleasure of my family.