NESREA partners with Police on environmental policing

By Mashe Umaru Gwamna

The National Enviromental Standard and Regulation Enforcement Agency (NESREA) said it has partner with the Nigeria Police Force (NPF),on environmental policing and capacity building of the country.
The call was made during an interactive training session on “Good environmental governance “held at the Force Headquarters in Abuja, recently .
The Director-General, NESREA, Dr Lawrence Anukam who gave details of the agency activities ,disclosed that the Agency was working to smoothen effective Police involvement in environmental compliance monitoring and enforcement activities .
“There are are several ways to strengthen the collaboration, some of which are the National Environmental Security Task Force, Environmental Training for Police Officers, Inclusion of Environmental Training Manual in the Curriculum of Nigeria Police Training Colleges, among others . It is important we get this right and to do this we need to get the Police into what we do”.
Dr Anukam further explained the breakdown of some of the hitherto ignored incidences such as the dangers in the use of mercury and other seemingly harmless chemicals which later turned out to be dangerous decades later. “The time to start monitoring and enforcing this development is now”, he said.
A statement signed by the Deputy Director (Information) Oyofo Sule
For: Director-General said according to the DG the interactive session was necessary because some key programmes of the Agency such as, the National Vehicular Emission Control Programmes (NVECP), the National Generator Emission Control Programme (GEP) and the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programmes which involve a large measure of enforcement are soon to come on board.
“The Police needs to know what constitute environmental crime and be in a position to do justice to it. This is why this training is important”, Anukam maintained.
Speaking at the interactive session , Barrister Lawrence Alobi, former Commissioner of Police (Rtd) urged the Nigeria Police to be more vigilant and effective in monitoring environmental crimes in the country so as to ensure environmental safety and human lives.