ONE issue that concerns every Nigerian today is insecurity and Ondo State is not immuned from this malaise.

THE  three senatorial districts of the state are bearing the brunt of incessant strikes by the men of the underworld thereby threatening its  peace.

In the northern senatorial district for example, the Owo-Ikare road has become a security black spot. In the central, we have Ogbese and Iju-Itaogbolu axis, and in the southern senatorial district, Ore-Irele road has not been spared.

KIDNAPPING and highway robbery are becoming  unsavory recurrent decimal on our roads and communities. We cannot afford to continue like this and be under a siege as the intending travelers fear to put themselves on the roads for the fear of being kidnapped or dispossessed of their goods.

NO state or nation can make progress this way. This is why The Hope believes it is time for every state to have community police as a way out of the present insecurity quagmire. The society has been pushed to a precipice and it has become paramount to take our security with all seriousness.

EVERY community in the state must be security conscious, police their environment, identify strange and suspicious movements   and report promptly to the police.

WE recommend that each community should  constitute a vigilante group to secure a source of information to the police.  Our belief is that unless there is an internal collaborator, external aggressors cannot infiltrate the society. This is where community police can play a role to more effectively checkmate the criminally minded among us.

THERE seems to be information gap waiting to be filled by community police. The scale of the country has now revealed like never before the inadequacies of the Nigerian Police Force. Something needs to be urgently done so that insecurity challenges  don’t completely engulf us all.

AND community policing is the way to go,  as it is becoming increasingly obvious that the current security infrastructure is grossly inadequate to deal with the increasingly brazen efforts of criminal elements.

ADVANCED countries have established layers of security apparatus, and Nigeria needs to follow this trend. We can no longer shy away from  the need to break away from the shackles of an over-centralised police force.

JOBLESS youths can be incorporated into the community police, which would at the same time reduce the size of the pool of people that could be lured into crimes. Corps members and jobless graduates can be properly trained and converted into secret police to cripple criminal activities.

THE  community needs to look inward; each state government in collaboration with the local government should set up security vanguards and vigilantes.

SOMETHING similar was done by the last administration in Ondo State, which recruited some youths to assist in ensuring smoother vehicular movements of on the roads. They were called the Sunshine Traffic Corps (STC).  This corp can form the  nucleus of the community police.

THE philosophy behind community policing is that the officers should be those who are well -integrated into the community, know everybody and are abreast of happenings.

WE  need to realise that no-one is safe in the state. Thus,  we need to put on our thinking caps to examine community police as one option we should take, as we have now been pushed to the wall and no respite is coming from the conventional police force, which seems to be  sleeping and repeatedly caught on the back-foot. That is why there is need to embrace community policing as a way to nip this growing insecurity trend in the bud.

THE present unitary  format of policing makes it difficult to know everybody by face and character, as most of the police personnel  don’t have serious commitment to the community, rather to their superior officers.

THOUGH the advent of community policing may be subject to abuse by power grabbers, it is becoming clearer by the day that the advantages override the disadvantages. For example, it may  lead to the police making better investigations. The added grass-root layer of vigilant eyes and ears of the community police establishment can lead to a better management of our security situation.

WE  need to evolve into a police state and for that we should be ready to make sacrifices from the security point of view, seeing that a society that takes security serious is not likely to be threatened. Communities must be more alive to their security. Strange faces or  doctrines should be promptly reported to law enforcement agencies.

EVERYONE  should share the burden of ensuring a safe society. To this end, the communities should take responsibility for their safety and be the eyes and ears of the security forces.

IN addition, the Federal Government must put more money into the hands of the state and local governments to fight insecurity, which has become a national scourge and embarrassment. Things should not be allowed to degenerate beyond this level .

THERE is also the need for effective education and publicity to curb general criminality. National Orientation Agency and their state counterparts should be mobilised for educative programmes to keep the people alert.

SECURITY information should fill the media,  and creative programmes deployed to ensure that the message permeates everywhere, so that everyone will  be sensitised and re-oriented to contribute their quota to making the country better security-wise.