By Emmanuel Udom
A former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Dr. Solomon Arase has said the church and other religious organisations have a critical role in curbing financial crimes in Nigeria.
He made this known while speaking at the annual lecture and award ceremony of the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN, held in Lagos on Saturday, December 7, 2023,
Arase who was represented at the event by the Assistant Inspector General of Police Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department (FCIID), Lagos annex, AIG Idowu Owohunwa said religious organisations are better positioned to curb crime if they cooperate with security agencies and also volunteer information on some of their adherents.
He also observed that many security institutions are bereft of technical knowledge on how to curb financial crimes.
Arase then called on the government to further enhance the technical, intellectual, and professional capacities of security agencies to curb financial crimes in society.
According to him, the increased rate of financial crimes in Nigeria indicates that those who are supposed to curb these crimes are losing ground.
The only way they can meet up to the antics of the fraudsters according to Arase is “for all security agencies to equip themselves with requisite capacity that will enable them to identify pieces of technically-aided evidence of the prosecutorial value that could engender the successful prosecution of the criminals.”
He urged churches and other religious organisations to up their games in working in partnership with the government at various levels to tackle criminal tendencies.
The ex-IG also called on the nation’s security institutions to build a synergy that could stimulate a coordinated and symbiotic approach in dealing with this threat including maximizing the tools of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU)?
He further called for pathways to bridging the capacity gap of various security agencies as regards the complex dynamics and highly technical field of financial crimes.
