Police deploys trained dogs to Railway Stations

By Andrew Orolua, Abuja

The Nigeria Police has deployed dogs known as the K9 assets to all railway stations across the country.

Inspector General of Police Mohammed Ibrahim said at formal flag off of the deployment that the initiative is within the context of Operation Puff Adder and “it is planned to compliment the existing security measures emplaced for the security and safety of passengers and critical infrastructure of the Nigeria Railway Corporation across the country.”

According to him, the deployment of special breed and exceptionally-trained police dogs for security duties is as old as human civilization. Hence, their utilization in combating crimes and sundry internal security threats in the 21st century cannot be over emphasized.

He said that indeed, K9 are known to possess extra-ordinary capacity for detection of Improvised Explosives Devices (IEDs), narcotics and other illicit drugs, firearms and other prohibited items which criminals usually engage for the perfection of their criminal activities.

The deployment of Police dogs is therefore meant for detection or prevention crimes along the railway corridors. Their brief shall be for patrols, surveillance, detection and apprehension of felons in and around railway facilities.

IGP Ibrahim said Nigeria Police have one of the most equipped, experienced, highly-trained, and functional K9 Section. They also have commendable antecedent of successful anti-crime, crowd control and civil disorder management operations in the country.

Indeed, it is on record that the Nigeria Police Force Animal Branch has been instrumental to the training and development of similar branches for other security agencies in the country.

He said that police planned to maximize its unique K9 strength to complement other sections as part of the broad policing architecture which we recently emplaced towards addressing our internal security challenges.

It will be recalled that prior to this time, about one thousand additional police personnel were deployed to the Nigeria Police railway Command.

This unprecedented deployment was designed to address the manpower gap of the Command and reposition them to address vulnerabilities, projected threats, and security challenges which the increasing human traffic and expanding assets of the Nigeria Railway Corporation may present, he added.

He assured that all the assets of the Police shall continually be mobilized and deployed towards denying criminal elements of any space to operate in any location in the country.

He said police will continue to encourage all citizens to embrace the concept of ‘if you see something, say something’. Indeed, our appeal now is ‘if you suspect something, say something’.

This is a civil obligation of all citizens and this is the most potent weapon towards collectively winning the war against elements bent on threatening our security.