The Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has disclosed plans to establish Agro-Ranger base stations in the farming communities within the territory, in order to curb insecurity in the territory.

The Director (Admin & finance) Security Services Department FCTA, Dr Abdul-lateef Bello, made this disclosure during a press briefing on Wednesday in Abuja.

This, according to Bello will help the farming communities return back to farms to ensure abundant and affordable food and agricultural products in the FCT.

How words: “The FCT Administration will establish Agro-Ranger base stations in some of the farming communities in the FCT. It is just a new initiative that we are building, and the idea is to help the farming communities return back to farm so that we can continue to enjoy affordable food and agricultural products like we used to enjoy in the FCT.

“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 revitalised 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 further stated that the process of disseminating banditry and kidnapping in the 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.”

Bello also called for budgetary interventions in some of the lapses observed including, the provision of perimeter fencing for schools that are not fenced, the 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.

He said; “It will take the 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, should 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 neighbourhood. They were sourced from the neighbourhood where those schools are situated so they know better.

He said that 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 appealed to FCT residents to bear with the government and provide support, 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.”

TodayNG