The police in Akwa Ibom says it has trained 496 youths from the 31 local government areas of the state to tackle insecurity in communities.

The Akwa Ibom police spokesperson, SP Odiko Macdon, said on Friday that 16 youths were selected from each of the 31 local government areas and trained for one month at the Police Training School, Odukpani, Cross River.

“Community policing as a strategy was conceived by the Inspector-General of Police in the last dispensation to ensure that communities were adequately policed.

“Each of the 774 local government areas in the country was asked to bring 50 persons for the training.

“We are asked to work with the state government, paramount rulers and village heads to nominate youths of integrity from their local government areas for the training.

“The police are willing to train them so that we can effectively tackle insecurity in the state,” Mr Macdon said.

He said Akwa Ibom missed the first batch of the training, adding that the 496 were trained in the second phase.

“Of the 50 persons per local government area, only 16 were selected from each local government. They were trained in Odukpani for one month,” he said.

The spokesperson said that the trained youths had been deployed to their local government areas to assist in community policing.