The Director-General of Rivers State Neighbourhood Watch Safety Corps, Dr Uche Mike Chukwuma, has said that the agency will assist the police to prevent crime in Rivers State.
He said the state government had gone to court over the existence of the Corps and disruption of its activities by the military and won judgement at the Federal High Court.
He had ealier said that the security outfit would resume operations in March.
He also earlier said that the corps would work with communities in gathering intelligence.
Dr. Mike Chukwuma said: “It is a security agency that intends to assist the police in no small measure to ensuring that crimes are prevented before they are being committed.”
He said that the corps was an intelligence-driven agency created by bill passed by State House of Assembly and signed into law by governor of the state.
He said that the corps would get information from communities and share with other security agencies like Police, Department of State Services among others.
He also said that the agency would make communities in the state safer.
Dr. Mike Chukwuma who spoke on a radio programme on Nigeria Info 92.3 said the agency will assist other security agencies any way they could.
He said that other states had over the years operated similar security outfits and was concerned why attention was focused on the security agency. Its activities were once disrupted by the military.
The Director-General of the state security outfit said that saboteurs were against the progress of the state.
However, a regional representative of African-American Security Study Group, Azuka Nnolem, said that the operatives of the security outfit had not been properly trained before deployment.
She said: “We were shocked to hear the news. We are a monitoring and evaluation team, a study group that basically had followed this particular project since 2018. So it is a shocker to hear that these people have been trained. This is a very laudable project but please let it be done properly. We do not want our people, the people of Rivers State to have people that do not have proper training unleashed into the street. It might end up causing more harm than good.”
The representative of the study group said she was shocked to hear there had been deployment.
She said that security was a foundation for other people to thrive on and said that the operatives should be properly trained before deployment.
She said she was shocked to hear the operatives were been deployed without proper training.
Nnolem said that there should be at least thirty days of training for the operatives before deployment.
Speaking on a radio programme on Nigeria Info 92.3, she said her group had been monitoring and evaluating activities of the corps since 2018 and was aware of the invasion of the training ground of the agency by the military.
She earlier said that there should be citizen participation in the project and that the outfit should set standard in line with global best practice.
