AKURE – It is no news that there’s no soci-ety without deviants who make life uncomfortable for the larg-er law-abiding residents.
Ondo State became prominent in the media from January to April this year when kidnappers and killer herdsmen resurged and un-leashed serious attacks on different communities.
At first, they began with kidnap-ping in some border communities with Edo and Kogi states. Shortly after, they advanced to suburbs of the state capital, Akure, as they began to kidnap farmers return-ing from work at locations close to Akure Airport, Oba-Ile.
The dare-devil gunmen abduct-ed a police officer who was later rescued by his colleagues from the den of the kidnappers.
As residents of the state capital became jittery, communal clash-es erupted at Oka-Akoko, Akoko South West Local Government Area of the state.
Some youths from Ebo Commu-nity attacked youths from Oka-Odo in error.
Shortly after, another crisis happened in a farmstead, Gbalegi, between Idanre farmers and some miscreants from Akure. A num-ber of people were killed during the clash.
People of Ondo State had be-come used to lesser crimes like stealing, house and shop-breaking among other minor crimes due to joint exploits of all security agen-cies in the state including South West Security Network otherwise known as Amotekun Corps and hunters.
There were barrage of ques-tions why security situation in the state began to relapse.
Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa was blamed for allegedly not fund-ing the operations of the security agencies which had drastically af-fected their performances.
In the midst of this milieu, a new Commissioner of Police was posted to the Police Command in the state. His name is Wilfred Olu-tokunbo Afolabi.
He was welcomed by the Akoko communal clash. Surprisingly, he drove straight to the scene of the clash which is several miles away from the Command headquarters in Alagbaka, Akure. That was the first time a police chief would drive to the scene of a crime in the state.
He met with the leaders of the three communities involved in the crisis.
Afolabi hardly settled the Akoko crisis when the news of Idanre/Ak-ure farmsteads killing filtered in.
He deployed his men to the bush at Gbalegi farmstead where the miscreants had chosen to unleash terror on the cocoa farmers.
To tackle the crime from the grassroots, the Commissioner of Police subsequently organised a stakeholders meeting in Idanre which he tagged “Community Safe-ty Partnership,” an initiative that aligns with the Inspector General of Police’s policy thrust on peo-ple-centred policing.
Traditional rulers, religious leaders and some residents of all communities in Idanre Local Gov-ernment Area were in attendance at the stakeholders meeting.
During the dialogue, he made the people see why they should cooperate with the police and oth-er security agencies in fighting crimes in their communities.
He assured them of confidenti-ality of whatever information they share with the police to nib crimes in the bud.
To further win the confidence of the people in the police, he dictated his mobile line with the people urg-ing them to call at any hour to give hime any actionable information on looming crimes in their neigh-borhood.
The Police chief was concerned about dealing with criminals who are troubling citizens going about their legitimate businesses.
On the grievances that led to the killing of some farmers, the Commissioner of Police sought the cooperation of all heads of the communities involved.
He dropped his mobile line for the people and vowed to apprehend the perpetrators of the heinous crimes.
Afolabi was at the Palace of Deji of Akure Kingdom, Oba Aladelusi Aladetoyinbo, and had discussion with him on how to resolve the feud between his kingdom and Idanre on the said farmsteads.
In quick successions, some kill-er herdsmen unleashed terror in Ago Dada, Adamekun, Ago Sunday and other surrounding communi-ties in Akure North Local Govern-ment Area.
It was discovered that the per-petrators came in through the neighbouring state, Edo State, to attack and kill several farmers in the communities.
The Commissioner of Police, Wilfred Afolabi, visited the scenes of the attacks. His findings made him suggest permanent stationing of security men in the communi-ties to prevent recurrence of the incidents.
On his arrival, during a media chat with journalists in the state, he lamented that there were no functional patrol vans with which his men could work.
This, according to him, had made it difficult for the police to continue with routine patrol of identified flash points in the state.
But the citizens would not take this as an excuse from the Police Commissioner, therefore he em-barked on self-help.
Sources disclosed that he con-tacted some of his friends and as-sociates seeking their help to fight criminals in the state.
According to a police source, the CP selected 15 among ground-ed patrol vehicles which were still reparable and took them to a mechanic garage for repairs.
He was able to raise funds to put all the vehicles in good condition.
At the moment of filing this report, 15 vehicles have been fixed and are used for patrolling of flash points across the 18 local govern-ment areas of the state.
The state government also re-cently added 10 brand new patrol vans to the fleet which has now enhanced visibility, accessibility, and response time of the police to distress calls.
He adopted another style of using motorcycle for patrolling of communities which are inaccessi-ble to vehicles due to their terrains.
Discovering that there were only 40 intelligence officers in the state, among them, 10 were attached to Government House, and the five to the state House of Assembly, the remaining 25 were left to han-dling cases emerging from the 54 divisional headquarters, he or-ganised training and retraining programmes for over 100 police officers, two from each of the Di-visional headquarters.
What he met on ground left many divisions grossly under-served as a result of inadequate number of intelligence officers in the state.
Executing these enhanced human capacity building pro-grammes, which were personally sponsored by the Commissioner of Police, he came up with strategic courses, which include Crime-Map-ping, Nipping and Timing Tech-niques; Arrest, Investigation and Prosecution Procedures; and Basic Intelligence Course for Constables.
According to a senior police offi-cer, all the courses were in line with the commissioner’s commitment to strengthening operational efficien-cy and intelligence-led policing and enhancing service delivery across all operational fronts in the state.
He explained that the first two courses were comprehensively de-signed for all personnel serving in the State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Inspectors attached to divisional crime units across the Command.
The senior police officer disclosed that these trainings equipped officers with practical tools and modern approaches to proactive crime prevention, im-proved investigation, and seamless prosecution processes.
He further explained that the third course, which was a three-day Basic Intelligence Course, was developed specifically for newly re-cruited Constables who had earlier been drafted for crime prevention duties.
The senior officer disclosed that following their performance and orientation during the earlier training, the Constables were fur-ther profiled and repositioned as Intelligence operatives.
The officers have boosted the In-telligence framework of the com-mand as they were deployed across the 54 divisional headquarters and tactical teams.
They now engage in daily intel-ligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination of Intelligence Re-ports (INTREPs) to relevant units for immediate action.
In a couple of weeks ago, the Commissioner of Police held an-other stakeholders meeting in Ondo City to tackle the menace of cultism and drug peddling which had led to killing of many people in the city.
The Community Safety Part-nership Initiative had took the Commissioner of Police to differ-ent communities across the state including Ifon, Idogun, Epe, Okitip-upa, Ore, Kiribo, Agadagba Obon and a number of communities across the three senatorial districts of the state.
It has been observed that with direct community engagement model adopted by the Commis-sioner of Police, there has been a mutual trust between the people and the police, which invariable has enhanced citizens cooperation, and fostered collective community participation in crime prevention and resolution.
No doubt, the strategies em-ployed by the CP Wilfred Afolabi have started yielding results as Ondo State has been relatively peaceful in the last one month as there were no cases of kidnap-ping, attack on communities and killings due to honest feedback, intelligence sharing, and collabo-rative problem-solving engendered by Community Safety Partnership Initiative.
Leveraging on intelligence-gath-ering to fight crimes, no fewer than 200 suspects have been arrested and several property, firearms and ammunition recovered.
However, with the new founda-tion laid by CP Wilfred Afolabi in Police Command, Ondo State, it is expected that the tempo would be sustained by successive Commis-sioners of Police with the support of the state government to main-tain the current relative peace in the state and even get better.