By Stanley Onyekwere
In order to check quackery among operators of private security guards in the Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has established a high-powered taskforce to check the menace.
Our correspondent reports that the FCT Command of the Corps constituted the taskforce with executive of the Association of Licensed Private Security Practitioners of Nigeria (ALPSPN) on board.
Inaugurating the Taskforce yesterday, FCT Commandant of the NSCDC, Peter Maigari said the core objective of the Taskforce is to fish out private security guard companies who are not licensed, or operating with expired licence.
Maigari said: “ The Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) is saddled with the mandate of licencing private guard companies and monitoring their activities; however, we discovered that some of these companies were not licensed.
“Those who are licensed know those ones who are not licensed, so in order for us to fish out those who are not licensed, we are now forming a taskforce to make sure we go after them.
“And to equally review those licensed to ensure that they are not using expired licence. So, they should step up and do the needful. It’s either they come to register and be licensed or they quit the business”.
According to him, “once the unlicensed security guards have refused to step up, and be licensed, is as good as building legality upon illegality.
“Such people (unlicensed security guards) will harbour some of these criminals we are seeing parading everywhere, that’s why we are asking them to stop”.
Responding, Chairman of the Taskforce, Kufana Danjuma, noted that the initiative is part of the solution to effectively tackle the issue, which is among the biggest problems in the FCT and country at large.
Danjuma, who is also a member of ALPSPN, that since 2009 quackery have been happening in the FCT and other parts of the country, but there is no proper sanitation especially amid the prevailing security problems.
He therefore assured that given the needed political will from relevant stakeholders, the taskforce will efficiently deliver on its mandate.
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