Insecurity: FCTA to establish Agro-Ranger stations in farming communities

Favour Ishember, Abuja

In a bid to curb Insecurity in the nation’s capital city, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has  taken steps  to establish Agro-Ranger base stations in the farming communities within the territory,

The Director (Admin & finance) Security Services Department FCTA, Dr. Abdul-lateef Bello, who revealed this during an end of year  press briefing in Abuja,

said the initiative will help the farming communities return back to farm to ensure abundant and affordable food and agricultural products in the FCT.

Fielding questions from journalist, the Director explained that “Kidnapping is prevalent not just in FCT, in fact if you compare the statistics of kidnapping activities in other states, to that of the FCT, you will agree with me that the FCT is really putting enough measures to prevent or contain the menace of kidnapping.

“In an attempt to deepen our efforts in the fight against kidnapping, we have revitalize and resuscitate the G-7 initiative, that we don’t have to do this alone, we have to bring all our G-7 partners to help us collaborate so we can embark on simultaneous and  joint raids to keep some of these bad elements out of the FCT.” He added

Dr. Bello opined that the process of disseminating banditry and kidnapping in North East and North West is putting pressure on the fringes of FCT, “That is why we engaged the G-7 initiative so that we can jointly push these people away from FCT.”

He also called for budgetary interventions in some of the lapses observed including, provision of perimeter fencing for schools that are not fenced, introduction of CCTV cameras at least for premises security and then deployment of conventional security agencies as a standing structure in most of the schools.

“It will take government a lot of funding intervention to be able to provide perimeter fencing for all those schools and I can assure you that the Minister of FCT, Malam Muhammad Bello has enjoined the Education Secretariat, in their budget, to provide enough funding for some of these schools in terms of provision of perimeter fencing and other basic security facilities.

“We’re also talking of short term measures when we said we are helping them to facilitate the procurement of vigilantes to complement the effort of conventional security agencies and you remember that some of the vigilantes are equally part of the neighborhood; as they were sourced from the neighbourhood where those schools are situated so they know better”

” the vigilante will help to establish a relationship between the community and government. When the vigilantes see anything that is beyond them they will relate with the conventional security agencies to help out” he explained.

Dr. Bello however, appealed to FCT residents to bear with government and provide supportive information when necessary because security agents or security agencies are not spirits.

“They are human organisations, they need the corporation, they need our information to be able to succeed.” He said.We have recommended to the Administration the need to provide budgetary interventions in some of the lapses observed in our vulnerability assessments, which include provision of perimeter fencing for schools that are not fenced, introduction of CCTV cameras at least for premises security and then deployment of conventional security agencies as a standing structure in most of those schools”