Crime now huge industry for unemployed – Kwara police commissioner

Kwara State Police Commissioner, Kayode Egbetokun on Tuesday raised an alarm that crime has become a huge industry tempting and employing unemployed in Kwara and many other states in the country.

He raised the alarm during the inauguration of the state community policing advisory committee in Ilorin.

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He challenged stakeholders to help tame the ugly development as crime and criminals have their roots in different communities.

“Crime has become a huge industry accepting all comers, attracting the greedy and absorbing the get-rich-quick, while constantly tempting, and most of the time employing the unemployed in our population”, he said.

He added that the crime industry is getting bigger and more sophisticated by the day. “Unfortunately, its only products are criminals terrorising and causing insecurity in our communities. Simply put, the communities are the primary producers of the bad products which we now dread so much”, he said.

The police commissioner said the community policing committee is composed of 50 members in each local government areas of the state, and called on members of the committees to identify security challenges in their respective communities with a view to proffering possible solutions.

He said the new approach, backed by the FG, is part of the coordinated responses of the IGP to recent incidents of armed banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism in some states of the federation.

The representative of the IGP, Yakubu Babas, AIG Zone 8 described state committees on community policing as a bold step towards domiciling objectives of community policing policy.

Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq called for collaboration of all stakeholders in strengthening the community policing initiative to end the security challenges in the state and Nigeria at large.