Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has backed the calls for decentralisation of the Nigeria Police.
“State police is the way to go”, Osinbajo said at the opening ceremony for the two-day summit on national security organised by the Senate on the spate of killings by herdsmen and other crimes across the country.
He stated these at the opening ceremony of a two-day summit on national security organised by the Senate in Abuja.
Also in attendance are the Senate President, Bukola Saraki; Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu; Minister of Interior, Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau (retd.); the service chiefs and senators.
He also stated that decentralisation of the Nigeria Police Force and creation of state police were some of the ways to go in tackling the herdsmen and farmers’ violence in the country.
The VP said, “The first is that the nature of our security challenges is complex. Securing Nigeria’s over 923,768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires far more men and materials than we have at the moment. It also requires a continual re-engineering of our security architecture and strategies. This has to be a dynamic process.
“For a country our size to meet the one policeman to 400 persons, the United Nations prescribed ratio, it would require nearly tripling our current police force, far more funding of the police, military and security agencies is required.
“Secondly, we cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing methods are clearly the way to go.
“Thirdly, we must intensify existing collaboration with our neighbours in the Chad Basin, especially border communities, to prevent the movement of small arms, and disarming armed pastoralists and bandits who go through our borders day after day.
“Lastly, we must avoid the dangers of allowing these conflicts to become religious or ethnic conflicts. This is the responsibility of political, religious and all other parts our leadership elite in Nigeria.”
