By Joy Mbachi
Agulu (Anambra) – Deputy Commissioner of Police and Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, says the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohamed Abubakar, is committed to enthroning a more efficient, people friendly and community-oriented police force.
Mba said this on Friday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the sideline of the capacity building workshop for Police Public Relations Officers (PPROs) in the country, holding in Agulu, Anaocha Local Government Area of Anambra.
He described policing as a dynamic profession which, according to him, draws its characteristic from the dynamic nature of the society it was established to police.
Mba said that spokesmen for the police, who doubled as image makers, serve as gateway for information management between the force and its stakeholders in the implementation of the national programme on community policing.
He said: “The PPROs are the vanguard of the community policing programme, so they are here to be prepared and equipped with modern tools for discharging this core mandate and achieving the overall objective of the Nigerian police.
“They are here to learn, unlearn and relearn so that they can be better in what they do and also serve the nation and the people better.”
Mba said that the force would sustain the training and re-retraining of the PPROs because the world had become fast changing in crime mapping.
He said that PPROs needed to upgrade, constantly trained and retrained to be in top shape to do their job, especially with the emerging new media technology.
He said that the workshop was designed to inculcate in the officers the capacity to inform the public factually about the workings of the force and also launder its image.
“It is the responsibility of the police image makers to reposition the Nigerian police and after this capacity building conference, Nigerians will see the swift improvement in these officers,” he said.
A cross-section of the PPROs, who spoke on their experiences at the workshop, paid special tribute to the IGP for initiating the programme.
Ebere Amaraizu (Enugu state command); Haruna Mohamed (Anambra); Ikechukwu Ogu (Ekiti state); Bala Elkana (Lagos state); Abdullahi Haruna (Kano state) and Mac Odiko (Akwa Ibom) all described the workshop as rich and educative.
They said that aside from availing all the PPROs in the country the rare opportunity to meet and interact with one another, it also equipped them with the necessary communication tool to discharge their duties more efficiently to the force and members of the public.
NAN reports that no fewer than 37 PPROs from the 36 state commands and Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, along with zonal PPROs of the 12 police zonal commands and many top officers from Force Headquarters attended the training, which began on Oct. 8. (NAN)
