Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode has urged the State Police Command to step up their surveillance in the state and come up with new strategies to tackle the wave of criminal activities in the state.
Speaking on Saturday, at the closing session of a 4-day Leadership Retreat for the State Executive Council, Body of Permanent Secretaries as well as some heads of Parastatals, Ambode urged the police to improve on their mode of operations to ensure the safety of lives and property in the state.
“We’re not yet where we want to be. We have only just 33, 000 policemen in Lagos for a population of over 20 million. Again, we don’t have control over these police officers.
“We need to let the Commissioner of Police leave this retreat believing that the Police need to own their own business just the way we have told ourselves that we want to own the business of governance. We need to see some things change, there has to be some form of paradigm shift, we want to see our police officers patrol in convoy between 12 midnight and 4am.
“There should be presence; we want to show presence, security agencies must also show presence. We need to enforce, we want to see patrol vehicle moving, we don’t want to see stationary policemen, they don’t have to stay in the vehicle, we want to see something different from what it used to be in the past.
“It’s still the same style, but people must see improvement on it. That’s why we on our own part, we have gone out of our budget limits, using our resources from the Security Trust Fund, to say that, yes, it might not be within our budget, but we would spend money to support the Police because if the state is safe, the economy will thrive,” Governor Ambode said.
He also charged his team to take the lessons learnt from the retreat and make a commitment to implement them in their various ministries, departments and agencies so as to better the lot of the people of the state.
Is it only in the night crimes are committed in Lagos? You are to develop policies and ask police to follow not shifting responsibility of governance on police indirectly. Security is governance. We are yet to identify any of your policies. Pls take a leaf from ur predecessor. It is not hard.