By The Metro 
The Nigeria Police Force has explained the heavy deployment of security personnel and barricades across parts of Abuja’s city centre, assuring residents that there is no security threat warranting panic.
The Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Anietie Iniedu, gave the assurance during a joint media briefing by security and intelligence agencies, held at the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA), in Abuja.
According to him, the heightened security presence is a proactive measure aimed at maintaining law and order following an upsurge in protests within the city centre.
“It is a joint operation. There is no cause for alarm at the moment,” Iniedu said.
“We’ve noticed that there has been an upsurge in protests in the city centre, and we’re trying to maintain law and order, which is our primary responsibility. The deployments involve movement from one location to another to ensure that the city centre remains safe,” he added.
He stressed that the security measures are routine and designed to safeguard lives and property, particularly in the nation’s capital, which hosts government institutions, diplomatic missions and foreign investors.
“Remember, we’re in the capital, and there’s a lot that has to be done to ensure confidence among those in the city centre, as well as our foreign investors,” he said.
The Nation reports that the barricades, mounted at strategic locations across the city centre in recent days, have caused traffic congestion and delays for thousands of motorists, civil servants and other workers commuting within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Speaking further, Iniedu said the Nigeria Police Force had expanded its security strategy from intelligence-led policing to what he described as “intelligence-led community collaborative policing.”
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He explained that the new approach recognises that intelligence gathering alone is insufficient to tackle emerging security threats and therefore places greater emphasis on collaboration with local communities.
“We’ve seen that intelligence alone won’t help us. We have gone further to create collaborative processes with our communities,” he said.
Also speaking, a representative from the National Coordination Office of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), Kingsley Amako, said security agencies had continued to strengthen intelligence gathering and financial surveillance to combat terrorism financing.
“We have very robust intelligence-gathering mechanisms. As they evolve new tricks and change their tactics, we are also evolving with them,” Amako said.
He noted that while some security operations could not be disclosed publicly for strategic reasons, security agencies were working collaboratively to counter evolving threats.
Amako also urged journalists to engage the relevant security institutions whenever clarification was required to avoid misinformation.