By Kazeem Badmus
The newly deployed Assistant Inspector-General of Police in charge of Zone XI comprising of Osun, and Oyo states, Mr Olasupo Babatunde, has warned those attacking police stations to desist or face the force retaliation.
He said that force is prepared to re- introduce community policing in order to achieve a peaceful environment.
He sounded the note of warning on Wednesday in Osogbo, the State of Osun, capital during his familiarisation visit to the State of Osun Police Command headquarters.
According to Babatunde, the force will no longer tolerate any act of violence or lawlessness which can disturb the peace in the state.
According to him, “There is no police that can be succeed without the support of the people and the people alao cannot live alone without the police.
“Police and people are like twins who cannot live without one another. That why we need each other and if we unite and work together, we will get to the promise land.
“The new police regime in power now has decided that we want to do transparency policing whereby we partner with the people and there will be no master nor servant.
“That is why we re-introduce community policing which you have known before. Police is now ready to go to the level of the people. We are all equal.
“During the end SARS protest,we lost alot of personel. We want to reclaim the respect we lost back then. People do not respect police again, some are even calling us Boys Scout because we respect human right and when they attack us, we don’t attack back.
“They burnt police station and carriers arm at will and we left them alone because we are afraid of what people will say after the saga ends but it has now come to that stage where we are no more afraid of anybody.
“If you attack police station, we are going to shoot back because we have lost alot of officers”.
On his part, the State Commissioner of Police, Mr Olawale Olokode, said the personnel available to the command is not enough for the over 3 million residents of the state.
While pledging the command support for the AIG, the CP urged him to help the command with the challenges facing them in order to get the best performances from men of the command.
He said, “I welcome the Assistant Inspector General of Police and his entourage to Osun State Police Command today. We also pledge our unalloyed support to ensure your tenure is a huge success.
“However, the command is faced with some challenges; inadequate manpower, lack of operational vehicles, dilapidated living accommodation (Barracks), lack of modern policing gadgets and other logistics. This directly or indirectly has had its toll on service delivery.
“Officers and men are transferred out of the command without replacement. It is therefore the command’s prayer and belief that the AIG’s visit at this crucial time would afford you the honour to help the command in looking into the enumerated challenges so as to get the best performances from my disciplined, loyal and duty conscious officers and men of the command”.
