…all hands must be on deck and we should not just jump towards the creation of state police, but we should consciously and meticulously commit all stakeholders to attaining a national consensus for its creation, while eliciting commitments from all and sundry thereof to work out the fine details of setting this security organ up. This will include ultimately strengthening the nation’s institutions and statute books…
It is no surprise at all that one of the questions that have dominated our political space in recent time is that of: “State police: to be or not to be?”, given the orgy of violence that has enveloped the nation and the seeming inability of the police or lack of will by the powers that be to quickly arrest the situation. Although the killings in Benue and Taraba States by terrorists dubbed as Fulani herdsmen, and the most recent murderous rampage in Zamfara by those that have been widely described as armed bandits, seem to be the areas of media attention, it is a notorious fact that the killings are widespread across Nigeria.
Particularly, governors of the three mentioned States have publicly lamented their helplessness in tackling these challenges, since the hierarchy of the police and even the entire military architecture, take their briefing from the president and commander–in-chief of the armed forces, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari. After the mass burial of about seventy persons massacred in cold blood by these terrorists, Governor Ortom of Benue State reiterated his earlier statement that if the president had responded to his several messages raising alarm about an impending attack of his people and ordered the security forces to take decisive steps to curtail it, the tragedy that befell his people would never have happened……….. CONTINUE READING