To improve the security architecture of Anambra State, the police have commenced the review of the Anambra Vigilante Service Law aimed at checking the excesses of the community-based security outfit.
The State Police Commissioner, CP Nnaghe Itam disclosed this during an exclusive interview with NewsNGR, where he highlighted the measures the command is implementing to ensure safety and sustainable peace in the state.
The police commissioner noted that upon his deployment to the state three months ago, he discovered that some of the incidents of violence, robbery and theft were perpetrated by members of the state’s vigilante group services.
Further analysis, according to Itam, revealed that some of the vigilante members were non-indigenes which he said, was in dissonance with the rules of engagement of its operations.
CP Itam noted that members of the Vigilante service must be residents of the community or state where they are mandated to provide additional support to the Nigeria Police.
“We are actually asking for a review of the Anambra Vigilante Service law to accommodate a variance of what we found − a seeming lack of control and supervision of the vigilantes because what the law provided for is that the traditional rulers are responsible 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.”
Consequently, the CP revealed plans by the command to re-profile all the vigilante personnel in the state, while emphasising the need to review the law to “accommodate this new character of the state vigilante service operatives”, including those found to be non-indigenes among the state’s vigilante group.
He noted, “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 of, oh, this one is from Ebonyi, and he was just living here… When something happens, you won’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.
“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.
The CP further noted an ongoing strategy by the command to sensitise members of the communities across the state on the need to resist all forms of criminal activities including the implication of their involvement in such acts.