Ike Ekweremadu, a former Deputy President of the Senate, stated in Lagos on Monday that Nigeria’s policing system has failed to combat insecurity, joining calls for state police.
Ekweremadu, speaking at the beginning of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Ikeja branch’s Law Week 2021 on “The Nigerian State and the Call for Restructuring,” advocated for police decentralization.
The Week’s theme is “The Nigeria of Our Dreams.”
In the face of an increasing wave of banditry and kidnapping across the country, Ekweremadu said police decentralisation had become necessary.
“Our policing system has failed woefully. There are no other federating states that have done what we are doing in policing.
“It is no surprise that with the capsizing of the national police, the nation’s security has also collapsed,’’ he said.
According to Ekweremadu, reorganizing the police force is no longer a question of choice, but rather a matter of necessity.
“In an instance where we have a decentralised police, we will have a federal police system and 774 police systems in all the 774 local governments in the 36 states and in Abuja.
“The implication, therefore, is that if the federal police fail, we have additional layers in 36 states; but right now, they are absent.
“Now that the federal policing have collapsed because they do not have the resources, the funding and the manpower, there is nothing to hold on to, Ekweremadu stressed.
Mr Bartholomew Aguegbodo, Chairman of the NBA branch, said there was no better time to organize the Law Week than now, given Nigeria’s current political situation, in his welcome address.
“Sometime in 2004 or 2005 the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, set up a committee with the task of setting a national vision targeted at year 2020 with all the dreams and hopes.
“The year 2020 has come and gone and the dreams are far from being realised.
“The founding fathers of this country had policies which would have birthed the Nigeria of our dreams if we had followed them to the letter,’’ he said.
Bad leadership and tribalism, according to Aguegbodo, have tragically undermined the nation’s founding fathers’ goals and pushed the country backward.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
