Mr. Donald Duke, A former Governor of Cross River State, has joined other Nigerians to declare support Operation Amotekun with a warning that South-West governors must ensure the personnel are well trained.
According to Duke, state governments can establish their own security outfit in a true federal system, adding that community policing is the way forward.
He said, “Community policing is absolutely inescapable, we can delay it and we see the consequence. When we decide to run a true federal system sooner or later, we will appreciate that the states have the responsibility of looking after themselves within the context of a federal nation.
“I do not see why the excitement about what the South-West has done by the Federal Government, rather than declare it(Operation Amotekun) illegal, they should have engaged them by establishing a protocol and the extent of local or community policing.
“Look, in a nation of 200 million people, we need a minimum of two million policemen; that is one to 100 persons. We only have about 350,000 policemen and half of them are following politicians and elites all over the place. We are clearly under-policed and we also have a military that is less than 100,000 engaged in a war that they are not winning.
“Eighty per cent of police work is intelligence gathering; who is gathering the intelligence; we are being more reactive than proactive. The police can train these people (Operation Amotekun) on intelligence gathering and allow them to carry small arms like pistol and their job will be basically to know everybody within their community.”
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