By Angela Atabo, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)

Effective policing is crucial for maintaining law and order, ensuring public safety and promoting social stability.

However, before this can be achieved, it is important for the capacity of the police personnel who are the drivers of law and order to be built through effective training.

In a significant move to achieve this, International Alert, Non-Governmental Organisation supporting peace building and conflict prevention, organised a two-day Training Needs Assessment Workshop for Police Cadets in Kano.

Dr Paul Nyulaku-Bemshima, Country Director, International Alert, said the training aimed at enhancing officers’ learning needs related to the Police Act 2020, the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) and Gender Awareness/Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV).

Nyulaku-Bemshima said the training which covered personnel from the 19 police colleges and functions and the police academy, Kano,is being executed under the UK-funded integrated security project known as the “Nigeria Reform Initiative”.

He said that training is a very good entry point for increasing understanding and ensuring that police officers are well-versed in the intricacies of the law, enabling them to carry out their duties efficiently and responsibly.

“If you want to increase learning and understanding around the Police Act, the trainers of police operatives from the police training institutions are actually the key people that you should focus on.

“We are teaching and learning with them new communication tools, training methodologies for translating very heavy information like the Police Act 2020 into very simple ways those trainees will understand and be able to apply at the end of their training.

“We will be expanding these trainings across board as the project goes on, because everything most of the police officers deployed to different parts of the country and to different divisions learn and do starts from the training institutions.

“We would outline a manual on the key elements that would go into a training manual that they could use in the different training institutions”, she said.

Nyulaku-Bemshima said that the simplified manuals when developed, would be produced and shared across board, the quarterly check would be initiated to know how well the manuals are working.

“Training is at the heart of operational effectiveness of the police.

“So we hope that key outcomes from this will be a better understanding of the Police Act 2020, as well as its application in their day-to-day lives towards enhancing public safety and security in Nigeria.”

CP Rashid Afegbua, Commissioner of Police, Training, Force Headquarters Abuja, the Police Act 2020 and the ACJA are crucial laws that regulate the police therefore, trainings are pivotal if the force is to really get it right.

“Working with International Alerts, as regards simplifying these documents, for us to have it handy, it is going to be very important and useful to us, especially for our training institutions.

“By the end of the day, when we have done all these, we will have the officers go back and cascade whatever they have learnt to the colleges”, he said.

Afegbua said the police is working on attitudinal change to increase believe in the phrase “the police is your friend” by adopting some changes so that the public would appreciate the force more.

Prof. Olu Ogunsakin, Director-General, National Institute of Police Studies Abuja, speaking on “Detailed Examination of Key Provisions for Policing” said the basic tenet of policing was about developing trust and confidence.

“What we are trying to do now is to introduce a level of competence that will assist them to be able to provide the necessary service to all Nigerians.

“Apart from the essence of the capacity building, it is a guideline for them to be able to act so they can provide a standard policing service to all Nigerians.

“The Police Act itself has 17 paths that are linked together .Majority of what we are trying to look at is how the police dispose their powers ,we need to be able to respect the lives of the people we protect and then protect their properties.”

Another facilitator, Prof. Isaac Albert, Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies, University of Ibadan, while identifying areas where knowledge is lacking, said the workshop aimed to revisit what is taught in police colleges to align it with global best practices.

“The world is changing. The Nigerian environment is changing. When the likes of the IG was recruited, we did not have terrorism, banditry and the level of insurgency that we are having across the land.

“That is to say, the curriculum that was used for training all the big police bigwigs across the country needs to be updated because the conflict environment has changed.

“Now, what we are trying to do and which the police has permitted us to do is to ask those who are managing the training schools, if there are gaps for us to fill in what in teaching the cadets and how they are taught.

“We are not the ones that will change anything in the schools, but we want to sensitise them to the fact that the security environment of today requires rejigging what we teach to be in tandem with the problems they want to solve.”

SP Julius Nwaejie, one of the directing staff attached to Nigeria Police Academy, Wudil, Kano, said the training was an eye-opener, very sound, well-packaged, well-facilitated and well-delivered.

Nwaejie said: “This course, we pray, should be a continuous one because we have learned a lot and it has made us to be more prepared to offer more to our cadets and recruits as the case may be.

“We are very grateful to International Alert and we believe that they will continue to be updating our knowledge more and more so that we’ll be getting more transformed, more well-informed police officers that will serve the country in a better way.”

Asp. Faith Dadagbon, attached to National Institute of Police Studies, appreciates the enormity of the challenge ahead.

“International Alert has trained us to be good trainers by way of helping us to understand the Police Act better and to have a good knowledge and skills required to be able to cascade them to our recruits , cadets and even others officers .

“The enhanced knowledge on the Police Act, the ACJA as well as the things discussed in the course of the training concerning gender issue will really help us to carry out our assignment as trainers better”, she said.

The police officers believe that by strengthening the knowledge and skills of police personnel, International Alert seeks to promote accountability, transparency, and community trust in law enforcement.

The capacity-building initiative is expected to have a positive impact on policing standards, ultimately contributing to safer and more just communities.(NAN Features)

**If used please credit the writer and News Agency of Nigeria.