Ogun State police commissioner, Kenneth Ebrimson, has assured of a healthy police-students relationship in the state, even as he advised the leaderships of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and National Association of Ogun State Students (NAOSS) against using students’ activism or unionism to shield criminals.
The commissioner spoke on Saturday in his office at the Ogun State Police Command headquarters, when he addressed representatives of NANS and NAOSS from various campuses of higher institutions in the state who attended a peace meeting with the state police command.
The meeting, which was convened by the Ogun State government through the Special Adviser to Governor Dapo Abiodun on Student Matters, Azeez Adeyemi, was aimed at fostering harmonious relationship between the police and students in the state against the backdrop of recent unwholesome encounters between students and the police.
Azeez and the students’ representatives had complained of incessant police harassments and victimisation of their members in all campuses of learning across the state.
They also lamented that police operatives in the state have erroneous impression about them, accusing the police of always making generalised branding of the entire students in negative robes, using the mistakes of a single or a handful of students.
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According to them, this wrong impression informed the routine indiscriminate raid on students’ communities and arrest of students even during examination periods.
But responding, Ebrimson assured of the command’s commitment to the safety and comfort of students in the state, saying the police remained their friends at all times.
He also urged them to endeavour to separate activism from crimes lest they be found to be shielding the wrong persons.
The Nation quoted him as saying: “I need your assistance, I need your cooperation, particularly in the area of fight against cultism. That is the greatest challenge we have in this state; not armed robbery, not kidnapping but cultism and it thrives in tertiary institutions.”
