By Diana Omueza
Abuja – Cleen Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, says it gives special consideration to training and retraining of the officers of the Nigeria Police because of their regular encounter with citizens.
Mr Benson Olugbuo, the executive director of the foundation said this on Friday in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Olugbuo also said that the police were the core security agent saddled with the responsibility to protect lives and property according to both the constitution and the Police Act.
“The constitution and the police Act clearly spells out the duties of the primary enforcement agencies in terms of protection of lives and properties in the country.
“This is the main reason why we focus on the capacity building of the police, especially on service delivery and the implementation of the provisions of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015,’’ he said.
Olugbuo said that the training was also to handle issues of injustice in victim and defendants’ cases, especially in prosecutions by the police in some states.
According to him, there has been an ongoing debate on whether the police should continue prosecution because it is observed that the police in some states are still doing prosecutions.
He, however, said that the foundation would go the extra mile to carefully and effectively interrogate on the issues of prosecutions by the police before shifting base into empowering other security agencies.
He reiterated that the training would be extended to other security agencies in the nearest future once a measurable and sizable number of the police force have been successfully trained on relatively all matters.
“Once we have trained a reasonable amount of the police whom we believe play vital roles, especially in the criminal justice system, we would extend the capacity building to other security,’’ he said.
(NAN)