By philip Eke, yenagoa
Bayelsa Publishers under the auspices of the Bayelsa State Independent Newspaper Publishers Association (BIPA) has paid a familiarization visit to the Assistant Inspection General of Police Zone 16 to foster a mutual working relationship at ensure that Bayelsa is peaceful.
The chairman of publishers association, Chief Evans Tubonah in his speech said the purpose of the visit was to seek collaboration with the police in the area of mutual benefit and pledged to give effective publicity to the activities of the zone.
Chief Tubonah thanked President Mohammadu Buhari for making Bayelsa the headquarters of zone 16, adding that the zonal office will help reduce crime and criminality in the state.
The chairman while congratulating AIG Austin Agbonlanor for the well deserved appointment, commended the Inspector General of Police for the choice of the zonal AIG whom he described as an intelligent and competent officer with the capacity to correct the security challenges in the zone.
He noted that the presence of the zonal office will send a strong signal and deter criminals from carrying out their nefarious activities and called on the AIG to pay more attention to the communities in the hinterlands.
The Assistant Inspector General of Police in Charge of Zone 16, Austin Agbonlanor in his response thanked the publishers for the visit and described it as apt and timely.
AIG Agbonlanor urged the publishers as professionals to use their medium to give positive reportage of the activities of the zone, stressing that if events are properly reported it will go along way to reduce crisis and ensure the prevalence peace.
He also called on the publishers to use their medium to draw the attention of well-meaning citizens on the challenge of flooding in the zonal headquarter in order to tackle the menace.
The Zonal AIG assured that with the presence of the zonal headquarter in the state crime and criminality would be reduced drastically and called for support and cooperation from Bayelsans.
He said, ” on the security situation, I want to assure you that the presence of zone 16 will surely improve the security situation no doubt, as our business here is to coordinate, and to also monitor and to also advise when we are supervising and to compliments the commands. As you know, our jurisdiction covers not only Bayelsa but Rivers State as well.
” So when we see what is going wrong, we can sell an idea to them, we can also supervise them , we can also monitor their activities. That is why if you have any complain of anything they are not doing well come to us .We will visit them to suggest on best to do it because that is part of our supervisory role and monitoring. So I want to assure you that the security situation would be better in the zone,” the AIG concluded.
