The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) on Wednesday, February 28, said security challenges in Nigeria were not as bad as most Nigerians portrayed it.
Police stated that the security situation in Nigeria is not getting worse, saying that most Nigerians believe what they see on social media which was regenerated and recycled as current issues.
Speaking in Ibadan during the presentation of a gold medal to the winner of Ache and kickboxing of the 14th edition of Biennial Police Games, tagged Oluyole 2024, the Force Public Relations Officers (FPRO), Muyiwa Adejobi said insecurity in Nigeria is not as bad as Nigerians read it on social media, saying people should always analyse security situations based on empirical facts and figures.
According to him, most videos and news of insecurity happenings in Nigerians online are old news, saying hardly any conventional media house publishes or broadcasts them the way they are on social media.
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He said: “If you want to analyse kidnapping, how many cases do we have in Oyo? How many do we have as per geo-political zone? So if you want to analyse security situations, you don’t do that with mere speculations or psychological projections.
“We collate information and data of incidences, we are the ones to tell you if security situations are worrisome, but with what we have on the ground, security situations in Nigeria are not worrisome.
“Most kidnapping incidents are fake or stage kidnapping when people shout that they are been kidnapped, it is not all these incidents are real, many people fake kidnapping to get money from their people, while some do that to collect ransom from their families, let us demarcate between real kidnapping and stage kidnapping.
“So, from us, the situation is not as bad as people read it on media, we have the information, we have the data, though, we have isolated cases, we can’t rule out isolated cases, we arrest them on a regular basis, we have taken the fight to their camp, we neutralised many of them, we arrest them and charged them to court.”
He urged Nigerians to assist the police and other security agencies in tackling insecurity, adding that people should raise the alarm so that the Police can take action against insecurity.
He said: “All security agencies in Nigeria are working together to tackle insecurity because the mandate of the President is for us to go and decimate activities of the criminals and we are out there to do that, we are not relenting on our efforts in making sure we give Nigerians perfect security situations we deserve in this country.”
In his remark, the NPF Director of Sports, CP Patric Athairu said one of the essence of the game was to discover new talents, adding that the game has discovered many new talents so far.
He said: “We are collating numbers of talents discovered so far, to introduce them to the federations for them to have necessary support. We might need to bring some of them out of where they are serving to give them the opportunity to focus more on discovering their talents, this will give us more talents in the police.
“We are meeting with the federation chairman because of the new talents discovered which are subject to verification, we are waiting for records from this federation, and we shall make it available as soon as possible.”
“As the medal stands, Zone 2 is leading at the medals table having won about 17 golds and over 35 medals, followed by the Force Headquarters with 15 golds and 34 medals as of this afternoon.”
