Igbawase Ukumba in Lafia
The Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA) yesterday trained police officers in the Nasarawa State Police Command on restorative justice, to avoid most cases going to the court of law.
This was even as PRAWA had last Tuesday also offered a similar training to youths of the state on alternatives to violence as part of the its training on human rights.
Speaking to journalists during the training, a Deputy Director of PRAWA, Mrs. Ogechi Ugo, said the training exercise was an initiative introduced to address challenging issues of trust and confidence between communities and the police.
According to her, “This is coming as a backdrop to what happened in 2020 regarding the #EndSARS protests. We talked with police officers, DPOs, DCOs and Area Commanders, sensitising them on compliance to human rights principles and standards in the performance of their duties.
“We will also extend it to other law enforcement officers like NSCDC, the Correctional Service, the Judiciary and the rest of them. We want to introduce restorative justice at pretrial stage so that it won’t be every case that must go to court.
“We have found out that training police alone would not solve the problem. We equally need to engage the public also so that there would be a balance, and that confidence that is required for the police to provide security for us would be achieved.”
A participant in the PRAWA training, Mr. Keffas Tiga, during an interview stated that all youth umbrellas in the state attended the training to learn how to live peacefully in their various communities.
Tiga, who is the state chairman of the Nigerian Youth Congress (NYC), added: “You know that Nasarawa State didn’t really join the #EndSARS Movement, but one thing we are trying to do is to learn more on the need to live in peace.”
