The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ogbonaya Onovo, represented by the Assistant Inspector (AIG) Zone 4, Muktar Abbas, said the leadership of the Nigerian Police Force recognized that the power of the police to fulfil their function was dependent upon securing and maintaining community respect and approval.
Onovo tasked the 97 officers drawn from across 14 out of the 18 community policing pilot states, that “you must consider yourself lucky to be in the elite group to have concluded the Divisional Managers course which is a criterion-based training, supported by the award of Diploma in Police Science. This is the first of its kind in the history of the Nigerian Police Force,” said the IGP.
The IGP said that it was in recognition of the graduants’ competence that the United Kingdom based Institute of Leadership and Management found them worthy for award of a Diploma in Police Science, and urged them to sustain the tempo as they go back to their respective work places.
The commandant of the college, AIG Audu Abubakar, represented by the deputy commandant, commissioner of police Orubebe Godknows, said the course was to rebrand the Nigerian police in the spirit of the ongoing national rebranding and to reposition the Nigerian police in effecting police/community relationship in crime prevention and public safety.
Coordinator of the course and International Police Consultant with the British Council in Nigeria, Professor Debra Willoughby, said the event was motivated to the fact that the role of the police in community policing in a democratic dispensation could not be overemphasised.
