On October 7, 2017, the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Mr Edgal Imohimi, met with students from different institutions.
He knew the importance and value of youths in checking escalating crime waves in the state, thus his extended invitation to the students.
The issue that topped the agenda was the menace of cultism and cultists in Lagos State.
Excerpt of his discussion with the students…
You occupied a very strategic position in your various establishments and of course your wealth of experiences in running your various student union governments is not in doubt. I’m sure we can partner together in order to put a halt to this scourge facing the communities in the state.
I invited you here today to seek for your support, cooperation, and partnership. Since I became the commissioner of police, I have hit the ground running; I have moved from one community town’s-hall meeting to other, trying to tell people of my policing plan for the Lagosians.
The intention of my plan is simple and the aim is to make Lagos the safest city to live. I believe it is achievable because our policing plan is empowered by the ideology of community policing and community safety partnership.
One of the key elements of community policing and safety partnership is that word ‘partnership.’ We have other important elements like problem solving, feasibility and rest of them, but partnership is key.
The police have come to realized that we cannot do it alone. We don’t have required brains, manpower, the logistics, and the intelligence to do this alone. In our entire town’ hall meetings, one issue has always come up and that is the issue of the student’s restiveness and cultism.
Most communities I visited told us that they don’t have issue of crime and most of their neighbourhoods are secured and safe, but the scourge of cultism has become so bad that if the police don’t come to their aid , it would consumed them.
My reply to them had always been the same in all the communities. I asked them questions. They are traditional rulers, elders, eminent personalities, community associations, development groups, trade union groups, transport union groups and others… I asked them what they were they doing while young people, who started out by having play group meetings, and who are supposed to be in school reading their books, metamorphosed into cult group that are now carrying weapons running around, killings and causing unrest?
They all could not give me an answer; they left the problem to linger for too long. You were protecting your children, rather than correcting them, now, those same children had grown to become monsters.
However, posterity would judge all of us harshly if we don’t seek to reverse the trend.
In all neighbourhoods, we people as young as 14 years being recruited into cultism and participating actively in cult related activities.
The thinking faculties of some of these children have not yet formed before they were even initiated into cultism.
They don’t know the consequence of their action since they are supposed to be under guardianship and mentorship; they cannot be held legally accountable for some of their actions.
It does now behold on all of us to come up with solutions and strategy on how we can take back our neighourhood from some individuals.
These individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to go from one community to another, creating and setting up cult groups and recruiting children.
We have responsible student union leaders, young people who head various groups in the colleges all over the state. We checked fact that most of them are instrumental to bringing down the rate of cultism in your various institutions.
It means that if you all allow yourselves to partnership with the police, you can at least help us or guide us on how we can equally bring down the issue of cultism in the neighbourhood and schools.
The intelligence at our dispose is that there are people who called themselves students, but they never graduated, never leaving the schools.
Every year, they are there, but they are busy initiating the young ones. We need to work together and identify people that are into such activities and come up with strategies to stop them.
We should come up with principles of partnership in community policing, in order to solve these crimes, so that we can have a safer and more secured society.
The colleges in attendance are Lagos State University, University of Lagos Yaba College of Technology Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Caleb University, Federal College of Education (Technical), Lagos state polytechnic, Ronik Polytechnic, and others with some deans of students’ affairs.
First Published 2017
