The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Adegoke Fayoade, recently chatted with some journalists in the State, highlighting his fight against criminals and his commendable strategies in managing protesters during the nationwide protest tag, #EndBadGovernance. JULIANA FRANCIS reports.
As the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, how are you able to manage the situation in Lagos, leading to Lagos becoming calm?
Let me say first and foremost, I give glory to God for my achievements so far. I want to agree and believe sincerely that when I came on board, because of my long stay in Lagos State, I knew the terrain of Lagos and I knew where to concentrate my resources.
So, I drew, I mean, my strategy for policing Lagos, I concentrated on those areas that are regarded as black spots and I created teams that could give me results. And thank God, they took a position in all these areas and they have been delivering.
How have they been delivering?
They have brought down areas that were notorious for criminal activities. They have made it sane; they have made those areas very good to live in. People there are happy and they can live, they can go to work, they can sleep with their two eyes closed.
Apart from that, I want to deeply thank members of the public for their support and for making me count on them. When I came in, I promised to, I mean, I engaged members of the public in policing Lagos. I have been able to reach out through my visits to area commands, town hall meetings and other meetings. And sincerely speaking, they have been very, very supportive.
They’ve been giving us credible and actionable intelligence, which we have adequately made use of.
What will you tell members of the public in the way you manage the protest, making Lagos a reference point?
When the issue of the protest came up, I decided to organize town hall meetings because I believe if we can interface with members of the public, we can play down the issue of the protest.
We can make the people of Lagos say no, they don’t want to protest. And even if there’s going to be a protest, it must be peaceful. When I went around all the senatorial districts, the verdict was that there should be no protest because they don’t want to have the experience of 2020, which was marred with destruction, loss of lives and every other evil thing that happened at that time. So they all agreed that they didn’t want to protest.
After that visit, I was convinced that this protest would be very peaceful because I knew that the majority of the people, more than 70 % or 80% of Lagosians said there should not be a protest.
This is not the time for protest. If they are saying there is hunger in Nigeria, let’s give this government a chance to, I mean, roll out their programmes and make an impact in the economy or the life of this country.
The protest day came and our men have been sensitized, we have lectured them. The Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokun also had a series of lectures with us on how to manage this protest.
He said that we should try as much as possible to make sure that it doesn’t turn to violence, we should manage the protesters in a very civilized and professional way, and make sure that the protest is devoid of violence.
Therefore, having had that lecture, I came back here, gave my boys a lecture too, and told them, ‘Look, Lagos is strategic, it’s the focus of all Nigerians, and once we fail to get it right in Lagos, it will send wrong messages to other parts of the country.’
So I told them, this protester will come to make us angry, protesters will provoke us, they will say things that will make an ordinary officer angry, and I said, this is not the time to be angry.
This is the time to be patient, you must be professional, you must take time to listen to the protesters, and must spend time convincing them that this is what the state wants.
And so when the order came that the protesters should be restricted to Gani Fayemi Park in Ketu and the other park, the Peace Park in Ojota, we had no choice but to enforce the order.
So on the first day, the protesters came out from different points, and we were able to encourage and manage them. We even walked with them to the Gani Fayemi Center, where they had their protest, they had their rally, they sang and did all sorts of things they were prepared to do. And by 4:pm they walked home peacefully, and there were no riots, nobody was slapped, no firing of tear gas, it was peaceful.
On the secondary, it was the same thing, although there was a little issue along the line, I got there on time, and I was able to resolve the issue. I remained with them till 4:pm when they decided on their own that they were leaving. So it has been peaceful, and we hope and we pray to maintain that tempo till the end of the protest.
Recently were able to achieve a huge success in terms of kidnappers that came to hide in Lagos. What is your word now for those kidnappers and criminal-minded people who are still in Lagos?
My advice to them is that they should relocate to another place. There is no chance for them to operate in Lagos. We are very much on the ground. Our intelligence gathering is very, very effective.
We are still monitoring some of them, and I want to say that very soon we will parade some of them for these acts of kidnapping and other vices they are committing around Lagos.
