By Ibrahim A. Jagaba
In late 2019 and early 2020, the Agege part of Lagos state witnessed series of unrest and security breaches mostly perpetrated by a peer based gang known as Awawa; a group which became popular and notorious for crimes in form of swarm robbery, where they habitually brandish weapons like razor blades, knives and axes to forcefully dispossess their victims of valuables including cash sums.
The gang from experience was dominated by teams of wayward teenagers who traverse in large numbers across the stretch of Agege, its environs and sometimes neighboring communities, one of which was Alimosho, all in search of targets to feast on, especially from the evening times to late nights; most times they invaded venues of ongoing events and occasions where they cause a stampede and latch on to rake in their booties.
The common saying that, no condition is permanent or nothing goes forever, rightly played out when, the then chairman of the Lagos state taskforce on special offences (enforcement unit), under the governor’s office, CSP Saheed Olayinka Egbeyemi, who incidentally, is an Agege son, took up the gauntlet to decisively fight off the Awawa menace and change the narrative through sustained onslaught and arrest of members of the daredevil gang and their onward prosecution in line with the stands of the Lagos state police command.
CSP Egbeyemi, who has since been elevated to the position of commander, Lagos state Rapid Response Squad (RRS), in an unprecedented change of baton in the history of the Nigerian police, a CSP succeeding a DCP as commander of a strategic, tactical unit of the police, speaks volume of the quality of the successor to say the least; hitting the ground running on resumption in December 2020, he adopted a hydra headed approach including, the Nigerian police’s community policing strategy and the proverbial carrot and stick style in his determined resolve to end the disturbing Awawa trend.
While, still serving as chairman taskforce, CSP egbeyemi and team recorded unprecedented rates of swift responses to distress calls on the activities of the then feared Awawa and sundry gang actors; strings of sting and covert operations were also maximized, leading to large-scale harvests of the gang’s members who were been promptly taken before the appropriate authorities to face justice.
At his assumption of office as commander RRS, prominent measures put in place to make the fight against the menace effectively successful as observed by this medium, included expanded routine, round the clock surveillance and patrol by the agency’s personnel; pin down points were also created across major lanmarks in and around Agege and environs, including the popular Pen Cinema, Oke-Koto and Capitol road junctions; it is pertinent to state that, pin-down points were hitherto non existent around Agege before his arrival at RRS.
The resolve to effectively win the fight led CSP Egbeyemi into collaborative synergies with police divisions and formations across Agege and the area G command which became a major step taken by the RRS commander, thus, huge successes were regularly being recorded as reflected in the numbers of arrests and consequential decimation of the gang to a near comatose till date.
In order to maintain the tempo and sustain the gains been recorded, the RRS commander initiated a scheme through which, members of the Awawa gang who had convincingly turned a new leaf, were offered legitimate, paying engagements where they earned living wages in efforts to fully rehabilitate and integrate them back into the decent societal fold; an independent critique of this submission will reveal alot of the unreported successes recorded under the scheme which has in turn further discredited the Awawa euphoria amongst Agege youths.
The commander went further to jointly found the Agege Molebi United Forum, a group that has now become famous for the promotion of peace, security through visitations to schools and mass walkthroughs side by side with educational support services to indigent pupils and students across Agege schools.
Rapid Response Squad by its name, is a tactical unit of the Lagos state police vested with the responsibility to complement the parent command In crime fighting through swift and proactive responses to crime situations across the entire Lagos state and this responsibility it has continued to discharge effectively as attested to by daily continuing testimonials by Lagosians; CP Idowu Owohunwa, the commissioner of police, Lagos state command, had during his recent working visit to RRS headquarters in Alausa, Ikeja, described the squad as indispensably instrumental to safety and security wellness across Lagos state, further affirming CSP Egbeyemi’s towering contributions to the command’s crime fighting successes as commander RRS.
Agege from our records has up to seven major police divisions and formation, including the railway,, Iju, Abattoir, Elere, Pen Cinema, Dopemu, Isokoko and the area G command headquarters; these are the police formations with the primary responsibility to fight crimes and maintain law and order across the locality; RRS by design is expected to complement the duties of these units just like it does to sister formations across the state; residents should inculcate the habit of first lodging all classes of complaints to the jurisdictional entities as a matter of correct and appropriate process
Matters of business as usual for the Awawas and gang war actors have since ceased to be in Agege, owing to towering sacrifices and collaborative measures put in place by the RRS commander, except for pockets and or flashes which is not unusual or unexpected in crime situation; the few aberrants and hopeless diehards would surely have their day with justice as CSP Egbeyemi, would always say when cornered by media stakeholders on his general scope for security across his jurisdiction and especially his Agege community.
