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From Jude Owuamanam Jos
A former Member of the House of Representatives, Dachum Bagos, has advocated the establishment of state police as a measure of curbing the spate of killings across the country.
He also called for witness protection laws to protect police informants who report the activities of bandits and other criminals to security agencies, especially those living in the communities.
Bagos spoke against the background of the recent statement credited to the Emir of Wase, Alhaji Mohammadu Sambo Haruna, who said that fifth columnists and criminal elements living among communities have often acted as spies reporting activities and movements of security agents to bandits and attackers.
He told journalists at an interactive session, at the NUJ Press Centre in Jos, that a policeman who comes from a particular locality can better protect his people. He said a divisional police officer, who is indigenous to an area, would not want any attack to occur in his community, and would be in a better position to know almost everybody and any alien coming into such a community.
He also called for the establishment of a law to protect witnesses, saying that most people are afraid to give witnesses because, in some circumstances, they may be the accused.
He said, “I have always been an advocate of state police because of the immense benefits. For instance, a DPO coming from a particular locality will perform better than one coming from outside.
“On the issue of people not coming forward to report criminal elements to the police, sometimes the fear of being the victim is what most of the community members are afraid of.
“But once we get the law on witness protection, the law can give the locals the power and the opportunity to make an arrest and hand over the suspect to the police.
“So, the fear has always been when you arrest and hand over to the police, tomorrow you will still see the same criminal on the streets and that’s why people have now resulted to jungle justice which is still a wrong thing; but once we have state police, you know that once you make arrest, you are handing over to the community police, immediately they will have the power to take the person to court.
“Having the opportunity to get justice is what people have always been afraid of. So, having state police for now, for me, is the best”.
The lawmaker, who represented Jos East/Bassa federal constituency before his tenure was cut short by the Court of Appeal, also attributed the killings in Plateau to the existence of a lot of ungoverned spaces where criminals reign supreme, and expressed the urgent need to reclaim those areas.
He said that, for instance, there are more than 64 communities in Plateau that have been so taken over by bandits, adding that those communities have indigenous people who have been displaced.
He also tasked security agencies to do more in the fight against insurgency in the country, and strongly advocated the use of technology.
He said, “When you have this reoccurrence, it shows that something is wrong somewhere, somebody is benefiting from something somewhere; there’s an undertone somewhere. In the developed nations, just one mark of the tire of a bike that would pass from point A to point B, they would be able to trace the serial number with forensic analysis and be able to know the car the tire belongs to and who was driving that car; there are cameras everywhere.
“So, in the 21st century, a lot of things happen, and all we hear is we are applying kinetic and non-kinetic measures to address the issue of insecurity. So, I still wonder what are those kinetic and non-clinic measures when the only thing I know that the developed countries use to address this security is technology.
