Stakeholders Engagement Meeting

The Foundation for Societal Empowerment and Rejuvenation and partner organization has organized a day Stakeholders engagement meeting with security and community stakeholders comprising of representatives of Police, Civil Defence Corps, Federal Road Safety Corps, traditional/religious leaders, Community vigilante group, National Human Right Commission, Ministry of Justice, Lawyer, Media, women groups, youth groups, and rightsholders.

The meeting was centered on the roles of Security Agents and Citizens in Promoting Human Rights which is a strategy to harness the roles of stakeholders as well as strengthen participation of citizen in promoting human rights in Bauchi.

Although Nigerian police force are constitutionally responsible for the protection of lives and properties of the citizens but the insecurity bedeviling the country is on the increase and it can be attributed to several reasons, first the ratio of police currently is 1 to 737, this number is insufficient to provide effective security services to the large population of Nigerians and to  tackle the myriads of problems the Nigerian Police are facing such as kidnapping,  human trafficking,  banditry, murder, vandalization to mention but a few.  In addition, citizens themselves in a way consciously or unconsciously contribute to the decadence obtainable in the police force due to lack of value attached to police work which is reflected often by   recommending or sending unqualified members of the society to join the Police Force. Also, often some of these recommended persons from the society to join the police are most times over aged people who cannot be easily train. The implication of having unqualified persons in the police force will continue to pose a threat to lives or brutality to the citizens except it is addressed.

Furthermore, there is lack of trust between the police and the citizens, the society’s perception of the police is negative, often viewed as corrupt, brutal, insensitive, illiterate, dirty and untrain.  The police on the other hand, for example with the End Sars experience find it difficult to trust the citizens, again, the community sometimes hide criminals, all these continues to pose a threat to human security and contributes to the violation of human rights.

There is the need to recruit the right people into the police force, build trust in the security system, raised awareness for people to know their rights, periodic town halls meetings and shared the police contact address, and social media handles in which the police can be reached easily in the state. The participant were further  enjoined  to know that human rights are natural and universal attributed to all human. Though it is the rights of the police to protect lives and properties as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution and other Rights instruments, the police alone cannot do it. Thy need the cooperation of the citizens which begins with them knowing those rights such as right life, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, right to liberty, right to fair hearing, freedom from discrimination, right to privacy, right to dignity, freedom of thought and freedom of lawful assembly and so on.

At the end participants were clustered in to four groups (CSO’s and PWDs, Human right activist and media representative, Religious and Community Leaders, and Security Agents) and come up with draft document and presented by each group.

The groups presentations were collated and harmonized as a communique at the end of the meeting with the plans of presenting to the government, security agencies, state actors, community and religious leaders and other Civil Society Organization.

 https://voicenaija.org/Dashboard/Gallery#:~:text=24.1%20MB,6.54.49%20AM.mp4