By Jethro Ibileke/Benin.
Edo State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Chris Ezike, has said that using the carrot approach in the fight against cultism and other crimes will yield better results than wielding the big stick. Ezike said this over the weekend when he paid a visit to the Management of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), where he sought for the institution’s partnership.
He emphasised the need to engage community policing in tackling criminality, as well as restructuring of the “students moral fabrics,” just as he charged parents and worship centres within the University community “to take deep look at their wards.
“While we (police) wield the big stick, we believe that the carrot approach will bring faster results. The best practice all over the world is community policing, partnership and engagement,” Ezike said.
According to him, a survey of crime in the South-South geopolitical zone showed that “Edo is not the best, and it’s also not the worst,” hence the need to interface with tertiary institutions.
The Police boss who identified kidnapping, robbery and cultism as the three major crimes in the state, singled out cultism as a catalyst for other crimes, adding, “if we remove cultism from our society, other crimes will drop because cultism fuels crime. He therefore tasked the university to carry out research aimed at finding lasting solutions to aid policing, just as he advocated for stringent laws to curb activities of cultists in the State.
Responding, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Osasere Faraday Orumwense, who thanked the Edo Police Command boss for his visit, pledged unalloyed support and collaboration of the management of the institution.
-Jethro could be reached on jethroibileke@gmail.com