- Restate Position On State Police
By Suzan Okenwa (Senate Correspondent, NASS)
Worried by a possible upsurge in crime wave and insecurity in the country as a result of the proscription of the dreaded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) by the Inspector General of Police, Muhammed Adamu, last Sunday, former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has warned that SARS or its alternative body known as Special Weapons and Tactical Team (SWAT) are not y the solution to the nation's police impunity problem..
Ekweremadu argues that unless the Nigerian police is decentralized to pave way for a state police, the problem was still far from solution.
The lawmaker in a statement on Wednesday by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Uche Anichukwu, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently begin the process of decentralizing the police in line with the agitation for state policing as a panacea for ending impunity and other alleged excesses of the current federal police in Nigeria.
Ekweremadu lamented the inability to accord a political support to a Bill he sponsored in both the present and 8th Senate to amend the constitution to create state police departments.
He maintains that by replacing SARS with SWAT as a way of addressing the ongoing protests over the alleged excesses of SARS, the government was instead dealing with the symptoms rather than tackle the sickness itself.
Ekweremadu said: “The ongoing street protests over the excesses of elements in the Nigeria Police did not come to me as a surprise. As a matter of fact, I had always known, and warned severally that a day would come when Nigerians would no longer tolerate the worsening insecurity in the land and the excesses of those charged with protecting lives and property.
“The problem with our policing and the attendant insecurity and excesses are engraved majorly located in Section 214 (1) of the 1999 constitution, which provides that ‘There shall be a police force for Nigeria, which shall be known as the Nigeria Police Force, and subject to the provisions of this section, no other police force shall be established for the Federation or any part thereof’.
“It is also worsened by Section 215 (2), which goes further to declare that ‘The Nigeria Police Force shall be under the command of the Inspector-General of Police and contingents of the Nigeria Police Force stationed in a state shall, subject to the authority of the Inspector-General of Police, be under the command of the Commissioner of Police of that state.
“This informed my Bill for the Creation of State Police with adequate provisions in the mode of financing, control, and appointments of the high commands of such state police services to insulate them from any forms of abuse and give citizens roles in the various State Police Service Commissions. Unfortunately, this has not received the requisite political support, I call on the President and political stakeholders, once more, to seize the opportunity of the widespread demands for police reforms by Nigerians to do the right thing, addressing the structural challenges”.
Ekweremadu further stated that: “Nigeria is the only federal state with unitary police. It has never worked anywhere. It is not working here and it will never work.
“Therefore, whether we call it SARS or SWAT, we will only be addressing the symptoms instead of the diseases until we decentralise policing to allow citizens and the states take charge of the security of lives and properties of its people. This is the more reassuring way of addressing the mounting challenges of corruption, excesses, indiscipline, abuse, inadequate and poorly-motivated manpower as well as lack of equipment and security infrastructure currently bedevilling policing in Nigeria”.
One of the lessons from the END SARS protest, he added, was that Nigerians have capability to enthrone changes which they desire as long as they engage in a united resolve and action. NNL.
