Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, has lamented over
the insecurity in the country, saying he is frustrated and almost helpless.
Speaking when he featured on Politics Today, a Channels
Television programme, el-Rufai said many of his counterparts also feel
frustrated.
He said governors are just chief security officers without
having control over security agencies.
“I am frustrated in my state. Many governors are frustrated
in their states. We are called chief security officers only in name, but we
have no control over coercive instruments of state,” he said.
“We’re all frustrated. We are almost helpless. The #EndSARS
protests clearly showed the limits to the control of governors over the police
and the army. Some of us have more influence than others. But to a large
extent, you ask the commissioner of police to do something, he has to clear
with the IGP.”
I am frustrated in my state. Many governors are frustrated in their states. We are called chief security officers only in name, we have no control over coercive instruments of state... we are almost helpless - Gov Nasir El-Rufai on killings and insecurity. #PoliticsToday pic.twitter.com/t9BaNjQMmo
— Channels Television (@channelstv) November 30, 2020
El-Rufai said insecurity has grown from bad to worse because
a sizeable number of police officers who should be fighting criminal elements
in the country are involved in non-police duties like “carrying the bags of the
wives of very important personalities”.
“We’ve always made a very strong argument that one
centralised police in a federation does not work. Nigeria is the only country
in the world that is a federation that has only one police force,” he said.
“We have made the argument that states should be allowed to
have their own police and that even local governments should be allowed to have
their own community policing.
“The number of policemen we have in Nigeria is inadequate;
it is less than half of what we need and a lot of them are engaged in
non-police duties like carrying the handbags of the wives of very important
people.
“We need to have a large footprint of policing in Nigeria
and the only way to achieve that in a fast-track manner is to amend the
constitution and put police on the concurrent list as recommended by the APC
True Federalism Committee so that we have more policing.
“In any case today, more state governments are responsible
for the running cost of the police. The Federal Government only pays the
salaries of the policemen but the running cost, the logistics, their vehicles,
their fuel are all the responsibilities of state governments.
“So, what are we afraid of? Let us just amend the constitution and allow state policing and in fact, go further and allow the local governments to have their own police. That way, we will have more security footprints.”
The government at the centre is power drunk. They insist on having a central police as they want to have command of all coercive forces. The abberation here is that the states individually bear the cost of policing but commanded centrally by the IGP.
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