Police Officers in Lagos State should give their job a human face by dealing rightly with citizens whom they are meant to protect.

They must apply the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution, ADR, to solve some matters instead of issuing detention order and allowing some cases get to court.

Police Commissioner, Zubairu Muazu gave the warning at the Graduation of Course ’35’ Police Human Rights Officer’s Training held at the Area F Command, Ikeja Lagos.

Muazu who spoke through Assistant Police Commissioner, Akinbayo Olasoji at the event, said it was a new dawn in the Nigerian Police Force, saying the force now had an Assistant Inspector General of Police with a listening ear and all should be emulating the good things he was doing.

Olasoji also noted that the training was to imbibe the culture of respecting human rights into Police officers so they would not tamper with their rights, thinking they were superior because they were in uniform.

He urged them to be as civil as possible because if they were not nice to citizens, no community would partner with them or sponsor their events, saying the fact that one of the graduating officers who happens to be among the best students was an operatives of Federal SARS showed that there was an improvement in SARS and because the Inspector General of Police had been emphasising on the fact that they don’t take people rights for granted had really helped.

Olasoji also spoke on why police officers were not conscious of retirement, saying it was probably some of them were getting money from other sources and they were not budgeting their expenditure on their actual income while some of them think the money would flow forever.

He adviced officers to plan their retirement based on their basic income because at the end, they would be getting fifty percent of their basic salary.

In her speech, Executive Director Of Crime Victims Foundation, Gloria Egbuji, said the training was to further equip police officers with human rights knowledge and imbibing the tenets of human rights in the discharge of their duties, so they could professionally serve the public.

Egbuji also said the human rights officers have trained about eighteen thousand officers in the Command since June twenty-zero-six and the training cuts across department’s from regular police, Mopol, Traffic, SCID and Monitoring, Anti Cultism, Anti-kidnapping SARS and PCB and they had been selected from all the one hundred and twenty divisions of Lagos Police Command.

According to her, the one hundred and eighty officers graduating today were trained on Basic International Human Rights Standards For Law Enforcement, Dealing with Victims, Suspects and witnesses of Human Rights Abuses and permissible circumstances in the use of force and firearms among other courses.

She therefore encouraged the Nigeria Police Force to nurture and sustain the culture as it was one of the world’s acclaimed benefits of democratic rule.

Also, Ligali Olakunle who represented the Director for Public Prosecution, urged the officers to put what they had learnt into practice and also to remember that issue of fundamental human rights were not transferable but deals with individual and personal liberty.

While citing section 34-39 of the constitution, Olakunle asked the officers to allow it form the bedrock of their investigations as any violation was against fundamental human rights of an individual, saying the rule of law was made for the advancement of the society.

A representatives of the Director, Citizen Mediation Center, Folashade Ajiboye said the center had settled fourteen thousand matters this year and that the center settled an average of twenty-six thousand matters yearly.

Ajiboye said matters involving landlords/tenants and debt recovery, family matters were not supposed to be taken to the Police instead they should be referred to Center for settlement.

The Course participants were tutored in many topics which included Fundamental Human Rights, Child Rights Act, Domestic Violence among other courses.

Other dignitaries that graced the graduation ceremony are: Eng. Ajayi Waleola from Works and Infrastructure, Chief P. k Change, Yinka Adeyemi, The Director office of Public Defender, Surulere among others.