Inspector General of Police (IGP) Solomon Arase has said an additional 158 patrol vehicles would be deployed across the country to fill any vacuum in the security space by the removal of military check points.
The IGP disclosed this to journalists at the opening of the Stakeholders Consultative Meeting on Improving Police Response to Sexual and Gender Based Violence/ Gender Mainstreaming, Tuesday in Abuja.
Arase said: “we are set for it; I’m deploying about 158 additional vehicles to the Safer High Ways to take over the spaces where they have just vacated.”
“I had already deployed 350 earlier; I’m deploying another158 to add to that one so that we can dominate the security space,” he added.
The IGP explained that the removal of military check points does not mean the police will stop their collaboration with the military.
He said: “constitutionally they are also supposed to assist us whenever we have issues when we require their assistance, so we still have to synergize with them.”
Explaining further the IGP said: “The issues is that when you want to dominate the security space it is how you strategically deploy your resources, that is what matters, the most important thing is for us to give Nigerians that psychological reassurance that there is police presence everywhere we go.”
Speaking earlier on gender issues in the Nigerian Police Arase said the police rule that said women officers must stay some years before marriage is repugnant.
He stated that; “If the men can marry from the training school, why can’t the women marry whenever they want to marry?”
Arase also said the police lacked the capacity to deal with gender-based issues at police stations across the nation, pushing for assistance from stakeholders in establishing a platform outside police stations to deal with such cases.
He noted that: “What we intend to achieve is to ensure that that platform is connected to some major hospitals in the country and all the gender based societies that we have so that in case of complaints, instead of going to the police station, you can use that platform to complain.”
He added that there are officers who are being trained so that once the complaints get to the platform the police can respond swiftly.
Arase said the process of training police officers to work with the platforms to ensure that responses to complaints are professional is ongoing.
He also said he wanted to leave behind a police force that is sensitive to the public it serves, stating that: “once you are not sensitive to the public we serve than we are not carrying out our responsibilities.”
Arase “I want to see a police force in the future, that when you mention them people start seeing integrity, they start seeing professionalism, they see people who are able to connect with their community.”
