Despite making the news in the past weeks, the Bauchi and Gombe Police Commands have left their social media accounts dormant for a while, WikkiTimes can report.
WikkiTimes’ checks revealed that the commands’ handles on Facebook, a social networking platform and Twitter, a microblog were inactive — to some extent — during the weeks under review.
The accounts ought to be under the care of the Police Public Relations Officers. However, Ahmed Wakil, the Bauchi State police spokesman and his Gombe counterpart, Muazu Mahid, often make the news but the social media accounts they manage were unattended to, on many occasions.
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For Instance, the Gombe command alone has three different pages as seen here, here and here. The first among these pages was last updated in 2018, during the era of Mary Malum as the command’s PPRO. The next one seems to be the one being operated by the current spokesman. Yet, the last release on it was dated May 26, 2022.
Meanwhile, the third Facebook page credited to Gombe Police Command appears to be created by civilians whose pictures flood the page.
Unlike Gombe, the Bauchi Police Command has only one Facebook account — a page. With that, it was inactive as the last press release was posted on May 28.
WikkiTimes observed the audience size of these accounts in relation to how they engage with the content. The Bauchi Police Command has about 19,000 subscribers on Facebook, while Gombe has over 3,000 subscribers.
In addition, the Bauchi Command’s page had three posts in the last two weeks and Gombe had only one within the same period.
But Gombe Police Command make use of Twitter more than Facebook. While Bauchi State has poor followership and engagement (100 followers) on Twitter, Gombe has 577. This is despite their dominance on Facebook.
Wakil, the Bauchi PPRO corroborated WikkiTimes’ findings. But he justified the situation of the command’s social media accounts, saying he has been “too engaged lately to keep up with updating the pages.” However, he said he would see to WikkiTimes’ concern by keeping the pages updated.
Mahid was not available for comments. His number was switched off and a text sent to him has not been responded to at press time.
