Ayodele Olalere
To curb the high rate of insecurity in the country, the Federal Government must allow the establishment of state police in every state.
While giving his opening speech at the 3rd Annual Lecture of Freedom Online, held at Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja, on Tuesday, with the theme ‘Nigeria: Foundation, Fundamentals, Future,” the Managing Director and Editor-in Chief, Freedom Online, Gabriel Akinadewo, said no country can develop without an efficient police force, adding the time is ripe for Nigeria state policing like other developed nations to be able to effectively tackle insecurity.
” Everybody is talking about insecurity but no country can be safe and by extension develop without an efficient police force.
Obviously, everybody here knows that the challenge facing the Nigeria Police Force did not start today. The degradation of the Force started after the collapse of the Second Republic and the result is here with us today.
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An effective, efficient, well-funded and well-motivated police force is central to the success of any democracy. Pitiably, successive administrations have not really done much to equip the Police,” he said.
Citing India and China, two of the countries with same high population like Nigeria, Akinadewo said Nigeria needs to emulate the two nations in creation of state police.
“India, the world’s second most populated country after China, has more than 2,000 ethnic groups. The population is 1.3 billion. India has 29 states and seven union territories.
To tackle insecurity, each state has what is known as State Police Services, directly under the control of state governments.
Recruitment of police officers is done by state governments through State Public Service Commissions.
The Federal government also has what is known as India Police Service and the Federal government is responsible for the recruitment.
Because the states recruit more police officers, some of them are exceptionally good and the Indian Police Service will write to the states to deploy the brilliant ones to the Federal Police.
There is always a ‘silent’ yearly competition among the police commands in India and New Delhi State Police Department is always number one. It’s the best in terms of staffing, infrastructure, modern gadgets, training and welfare, followed by Kerala State,” he said.
He added: “Nigeria is not too big to learn from big or small countries. Nigeria’s problems are localised, so we cannot continue to use a central method to tackle local challenges. An intelligence-driven police force, working with security bodies at the states level, will ensure insecurity becomes history in Nigeria. In essence, we must re-evaluate the country’s security architecture.
If we are talking of development, it can only start from the grassroots, not at the centre. We can’t be running a federal system with a unitary attitude and expect development.”
