Lagos State Commissioner of Police Adegoke Fayoade is not new to Lagos having previously served as DPO and Deputy Commissioner; he sat down withto talk about his framework to policing Lagos, why he chose Police ahead of University lecturer and other issues.
I drew out my plans and one of which I know other CPs have been battling with is removing motorcycle operators from prohibited areas. From my experience of policing in Lagos, criminals hide under the guise of okada operator to operate because it is a very easy getaway for them once they rob their victims or try to get away with their loot. So, the government has always insisted that okada should not operate in certain areas.
Apart from these I also know that I have to sensitise the police force. I have to make them put more effort into serving the general public. That is to say, the DPO area commander should always be on their toes to supervise their men to do what they are supposed to do. One thing that I know is that once you give an assignment and you don’t follow up, you will not get results. So, you must be on their track every hour.
The issue of trust that you mention will take me to the next question. During the last worker’s national strike in February, the Lagos Police came out distributing cold water and biscuits to protesters in Lagos in volatile areas like Ojota. How did you arrive at this model that has got a lot of people taking?
The intention was to ensure that everybody remained healthy and strong throughout the protest and no one collapses. We don’t want any casualty whatsoever. We want it to be incident-free. So, I said let’s get water and biscuit so that we can energise the protesters. So, I got enough water and we had a biscuit for that matter. At the end of the day, we give glory to God, the protest was peaceful and there was no incident. Not a single confrontation. No one slapped anyone.
Yes! We are doing something already to make the hot spots become soft spots. We have targeted these hot spots. I have the list of them and we are removing miscreants in all these places. Some of them might be taken over by the government because if there is no activity there, these miscreants and criminals will return to the place. We are going to make the raid a continuous one. In the last few days, we have taken about 1500 miscreants out of the hot spots and we are going to intensify our raid.