Security agencies calm fears over barricades in Abuja

Security agencies on Thursday explained the reason behind the heavy deployment of security personnel and barricades across parts of Abuja’s city centre.

They assured residents and visitors that the measures are routine and aimed at maintaining law and order amid increasing protests in the Federal Capital Territory.

The barricades, which have been mounted at strategic locations in the city centre in recent days, have caused gridlock and delays for thousands of motorists, civil servants and other workers moving to and from offices in the Federal Capital Territory.

Responding to concerns over the security measures during a joint media briefing by security and intelligence agencies, Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Anietie Iniedu, assured residents that there was no security threat warranting panic.

“It is a joint operation. There is no cause for alarm at the moment,” Iniedu said.

He explained that the security agencies had observed an upsurge in protests within the city centre and had consequently intensified security deployments to ensure public safety.

“We’ve noticed that there has been an upsurge of protests in the city centre, and we’re trying to maintain law and order as is our basic and primary responsibility.

“The deployments are basically deployments with movement from one location to the other to ensure that our city centre is safe,” he said.

The police spokesman stressed that the heightened security presence was particularly important because Abuja serves as Nigeria’s capital city and hosts diplomatic missions, government institutions and foreign investors.

“Remember, we’re in the capital, and there’s a lot that has to be done to ensure confidence in those in the city centre and also for our foreign investors,” he added.

Speaking further, Iniedu said the Nigeria Police Force had expanded its security strategy beyond intelligence-led policing to what he described as “intelligence-led community collaborative policing.”

He said the approach recognises that intelligence gathering alone was insufficient to tackle emerging security threats and therefore places greater emphasis on collaboration with local communities.

“We’ve seen that intelligence alone won’t help us. We have gone far to create collaborative processes with our communities,” he said.

Also speaking, Kingsley Amako of the National Coordination Office of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit said security agencies had continued to strengthen intelligence gathering and financial surveillance to combat terrorism financing.

“We have very robust intelligence-gathering mechanisms. As they are evolving into new tricks and changing their tactics, we are also evolving with them,” Amako said.

He noted that while some security operations could not be disclosed publicly, agencies were working collaboratively to counter evolving threats and urged the media to engage security institutions whenever clarification was required. (Punch)