Categories: News

Again, El-Rufai Makes Case For State Police, Says It’s Panacea To Insecurity

El-rufai

Kaduna state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, has again doubled down on his agitation for state police, saying it’s the missing piece in Nigeria’s insecurity jigsaw puzzle.

For years on end, El-Rufai’s Kaduna has been ravaged by insecurity with bandits, on the one hand wreaking havoc, while ethnic militias on the other hand turn the state to hotbed of fratricidal and communal clashes.

But speaking on Wednesday at the presentation of the 2020 Annual Security Report in Kaduna, El-Rufai said the Nigerian police force has it’s presently constituted can’t tackle the grave security challenges that betide the country.

The governor also reiterated his call for the decentralisation of policing, noting that the country is underpoliced as the police officers in Nigeria are not sufficient.

He averred that states need to move from mere platitudes about state policing and exert their influence by working towards actualisation of a system of police that works for all, noting that adding to and consolidating the power states is crucial to “decentralisation of policing”.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai

He added: “The prerogatives of the state need to be asserted, not merely proclaimed. The people we put in uniform must never be placed in avoidable danger, outgunned or outnumbered by non-state actors.

“In our view, critical to multiplying and reinforcing state power is a decentralisation of policing. “There are simply are not enough police officers in Nigeria and the idea of policing such a vast, federal republic of nearly a million square kilometres in a unitary manner is not pragmatic.

“This arrangement has already proven inadequate and we should promptly replace it with state police and other levels of policing.”

He added that his government has invested in a CCTV network that is being deployed in Kaduna metropolis “while options for consistent operations of its drones are being explored”.