By OKECHUKWU KESHI UKEGBU

A civil rights group, COMPPART Foundation for Justice and Peace Building, has written to President Muhammadu Buhari demanding that the N13.3billion earmarked for the community policing project be disbursed through the Police Trust Fund for management and not the Nigeria Police Force.

In the letter endorsed by its Executive Director, Saviour Akpan, the group argued that “it is not the duty of the police anywhere in the world to implement community policing. Rather, it is the community with the police and other security agencies as partners.”

According to COMPPART, the scale of training requirement in community policing is such that it is simply not feasible to rely on the existing training institutions of the Nigeria, because “it will involve training and redeployment of social agents within the cultural sensibilities of the different states and communities in Nigeria.”

The group is of the opinion that such will be properly managed by the Police Trust Fund which is a creation of an Act of Parliament with accountability as its core mandate.

It argued further: “Our experience over the years shows that if the money is given to the Nigeria Police to manage, we will not be able to achieve the import of community policing in Nigeria,” stressing that such fund may likely be mismanaged.

However, the group is grateful that the President has chosen to move the community policing project forward since its formal launch in April 2004.

The group said that the project has moved from what it describes as “political sloganeering” to a more realistic stage which has witnessed the release of take-off funds.

Update news