We cannot tackle crime without community support – LNSC boss

Chairman, Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps, LNSC, Deputy Inspector General of Police, DIG (Rtrd) Israel Ajao, speaks with Medinat Kanabe on the new community security organisation and how it is collaborating with the Lagos Police Command. 

What is Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps, LNSC all about?

Neighbourhood Safety Corp, LNSC was set up in 2016 by His Excellency the governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode. It is not a voluntarily organisation like the vigilante, OPC or night guards; it is a legally established security outfits. We have a list of duties assigned to us but our main function is to compliment the efforts of the police in securing our neighbourhoods. Once you secure the neighbourhoods, then you are securing communities because it is neighbourhood that makes up the communities. We achieve our duties through synergy with the police and that synergy is very effective.

What powers does the LNSC have?

Like all security outfits and like all citizens, we have the power of arrest. When an offence is committed in our presence or we have information that an offence has been committed, or about to be committed, we have the power to arrest and we have been doing that since April 2016 when we started. The first batch, batches 1 and 2 started work on April 1, 2017 and if you add that to the batches 3 and 4 that will be called into service very soon, we will have about 5700 and if you divide that by the number of local governments and LCDAs, it is 100 per LGA.

What are you not allowed to do?

Is there anything we are not allowed to do when it comes to securing lives and properties? I doubt it but the law itself states patrolling, arrest offenders, ensure that offenders are handed to the police, as soon as they are arrested after preliminary investigations; and as soon as they are charged to court, follow up because you made the arrest so you are the closest contact to the scene of crime.

We are even saddled with duties relating to traffic control; we are not supposed to take over the duties of LASTMA but if we observe gridlock anywhere in Lagos State, we move in, ensure that the gridlock is eased and go about our normal duties.

What major feat have you recorded so far?

Many! There is hardly any serious achievement that has been made by the police command that does not involve the LNSC. You must have heard about the recent badoo crisis in Ikorodu. The crisis was one pain in the neck for both the police command and the LNSC.

Right now, the synergy has been so strengthened that if you go to Lion Building in Lagos Island, the headquarters of Area A police command, the assistant commissioner of police in charge has established an office for the LNSC in his office. That shows you the effectiveness of the collaboration and what they do is patrol together.

We are blessed with a governor who has passion for security. When we took off, he gave us three vehicles for each of the 57 local government and not just ordinary vehicles, but Hilux Patrol cars and jeeps for difficult terrains and if you multiply 3 by the 57 Local government and LCDAs we have about 171 patrol cars.

The police do not have all the vehicles in the world and we know that His Excellency is doing all in his power to empower them particularly the RRS but you see; we go beyond the RRS which primarily works in the metropolis. We go to all the nook and crannies, all the local governments and so these three vehicles are committed to assisting the various DPOs in the various local governments. We started that at Ikorodu and it paid off handsomely

We don’t carry guns, but once we are in joint patrol with the police, they carry guns. What we do mostly is to go underground and source information which we will process into intelligence and give to the police.

What challenges do you face?

The major challenge we have is posed by criminals. If you go to central business district on the island today, you will see people talking about men riding bicycles to patrol. The bicycle was given to us by the governor for patrol and he bought 5700, so every corps officer has a bicycle.  It makes it easier to patrol and it has a specially made helmet. We have recorded about four cases of serious attacks; on Coker Bridge in Aguda Surulere; this officer was patrolling sometime in June 2017 and someone just broke a bottle from the back and stabbed him on the neck which cut off some part of his vein but thank God the police rose to the challenge and got the man arrested and prosecuted.

At Isokoko in Agege, we went on a joint raid with the police because that place is notorious for cocaine, marijuana and heroin use. It was so successful that for quite some time there was nothing like that there but one night the leader of one of the gangs discovered that one of our officials lives there, he mobilized his boys and they went to attack him. We got him arrested, charged him to court and he was jailed.

What about finance?

We don’t have any problems with finance. It is funded exclusively by the Lagos State government and I must say that the governor believes that with the kind of development coming into Lagos, we need security. Incidentally I am also a member of the Lagos State Security Trust Fund, so when you ask of funding, I can say authoritatively that you cannot have the kind of funding you have in Lagos State in any other state of the federation. The men are paid as at when due and they are not just paid, they are paid at the right time and are paid the same as public officers in the employment of the Lagos state governments.

How about qualification criteria?

They are about the best that you can get in this circumstance. The highest rank so far is what we call DCC, Deputy Corps Commander and we have 3 of them.

One is in charge of intelligence, a graduate of Unilag; another one is in charge of operations and the last one is in charge of administration.

And then these three departments have their branches in all the local governments. Apart from that, we have master degree holders, and surprisingly we have lawyers too. I got to know once when I was pursuing a court case and I got a text from a lady saying she was called to the bar some years ago and she is a staff. She said they are about 15, so I have formed a legal team here.

first published in The Nation of January20, 2018