As  part of his familiarization tours of Media Houses in Benin, he visited BNCL, Publishers of Observer titles and had a closed door meeting with the corporation’s management and team of editors. That was just few days after he arrived Benin to assume duty as Commissioner of Police Edo State. His name is Sam Damilola Adegbuyi.
Before leaving us, we requested for an interview with him, which he graciously obliged. When it was my turn to ask him question, I deliberately decided that I would drop hot pebbles. Call it hard or provocative questions, you may not be wrong. There is a way you throw  some hot question to gauge a man’s temperamental constitution.   That was exactly what happened.
I thought he would get angry and with that, open up his flanks for hotter questions to be unleashed.
But he disarmed me. He looked at me in the face and with a steadily growing smile sprouting from both ends of his lips he provided answers that addressed the issues we raised.
We were truly impressed. Humility, equally matched by a display of his intellectual effrontery made the interview particularly edifying.
His media-friendliness is also something to be cherished. He knows the value of public relations and constructive interface between the 4th estate of the Realm and the police.
How has he fared since his arrival in Edo State? It has been wonderful. He has been building on the good foundation of his predecessor, and doing a lot to re-focus and redefine strategies. He holds the view that security is such a complex enterprise that must not be left for the police alone. “It is everybody’s job,” he says.
And now just between the month of May and June, the Commissioner recorded phenomenal achievements in crime detection and control.
The following will suffice Within this period 227 suspects were charged for kidnapping cultism, murder, robbery and unlawful possession of firearms. While 30 kidnap victims were rescued, 25 suspected kidnappers were arrested.
Exhibits recovered included 9 AK Riffles 10 cut to size, 55 cartridges, 9 live ammunition, 5 double barrels and 1 Toyota panic. This is just for a period of less than two months.
The truth of the matter is that this is no mean achievement and the  commissioner of police actually deserves commendation.
With a re-engineered Public Relations Department, there is improved communication flow between members of the public and the command. People are more likely to help police with information because of this new orientation instituted and being nurtured by CP Adegbuyi.
Put a call to the Commissioner and he picks immediately Same thing goes for the PPRO and some other officers whose phone numbers are in public domain. This is a welcome development.
Crime control, in an increasingly sophisticated society like ours is not as easy as most of us think. The police is an institution or agency that is constitutionally mandated to under take the risky task of shielding our collective humanity from social misfits and hoodlums.
There is no way crime or criminality can be completely extirpated from any society. What we can therefore expect is that it should be brought to a level that would enable the law abiding ones to go about their normal businesses without hindrance and molestation.
Edo State is the gateway to the North, South East and South West, -so geographically strategic that it earned the title, heartbeat of the nation. “A good number of the criminals  that have been noted by the police are said to be traveling criminals,-meaning they are not resident in Edo State.
When Sam Damilola assumed duty as Commissioner of Police some month ago, it didn’t quite take him long to understand that he was in a peculiarly strategic terrain. His media friendliness and strategic mechanism for information gathering has endeared him to the people who feel they need to assist him to be a success story.
We are watching. Ride on Commissioner Adegbuyi.