In the summer of 2014, Dr. Aminu Musa Audu was awarded the Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson OBE ‘Achievement Award’. This was in recognition of his invaluable contributions to the development of the Liverpool City region and in support of the International Festival for Business, 2014. This recognition was quickly succeeded by other notable achievements stemming from his doctoral research in community policing.
As a brilliant academic, his doctoral research ‘Community Policing: Exploring police/community relationship for crime control in Nigeria’ received a high praise by his assessors and other renowned researchers at the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.
The recommendations of his thesis form an intellectual base upon which an international institute for community policing is now being established. The institute, the International Institute for Community Policing, IICOPOL is headquartered in the ancient city of Idah in Kogi State, North Central, Nigeria.
Dr Audu’s thesis has now been made into a fast-selling book that has become one of the bestselling sociological interventions for the policing systems in Nigeria, Africa and the rest of the world.
Through intense research and wide consultation with global stakeholders in global security and community policing, Dr Audu’s book has been hailed as a timely contribution. The title of the book Police Corruption and Community Policing in Nigeria: A Sociological Case Study and is taking the global book distribution by storm.
The book enjoys amazing global acceptance with generous praises pouring in from experts across the world. One of such commendations is by Prof Sandra Walklate – “This book provides empirically informed insights about these processes affording the reader the opportunity to unpick some of the problems generated by the way in which community policing has travelled the globe.”
Dr Aminu Musa Audu’s successful development of the Ochamalienwu Theory Of Community Policing marks a major breakthrough in the global quest for efficient policing policy. Since the launch of the book in the UK last year, Amazon and other bookstores have been besieged by orders across the UK, USA, Asia, Africa and elsewhere around the world. This massive demand speaks to the desire of stakeholders in the policing sector to rethink current approach to policing and consider adopting the Community policing option put forward by Dr Audu which recognizes good relationships as essential ingredients for successful policing duties.
The establishment of IICOPOL among other objectives is to be a lead- global resource Centre of excellence for effective community policing, and security strategies by providing a forum for the mutual exchange and cross-fertilization of ideas on community policing and experiences among members, other institutions, Governmental Departments in Nigeria and other part of the world. This, IICOPOL hopes to achieve, through four thematic areas of Research, Training, Professional Fellowship and Community and Advocacy.
Apart from making the long desired peaceful coexistence within and across communities a reality, the emergence of IICOPOL will mark a source of hope of employment for Nigerians particularly the youths as it will meaningfully engage them locally and internationally.
Dr. Audu is indeed a shining star both in his home country, Nigeria and around the world.
His home country Nigeria must now quit repeating its current approach which has proved fatally ineffective. We must make haste and take advantage of this well researched of community policing policy design by this astute scholar. The book is available on Amazon.com and other major retail bookstores with the cover title of: Police Corruption and Community Policing in Nigeria: A Sociological Case Study.
– Oshaloto, Joseph Tade
Senior Creative Executive, RockWaters Publica and Consulting Ltd, Abuja, FCT.
