By Jane Okafor, Abuja
Former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mike Okiro, has declared that state police as being clamoured for by some people is not practicable in Nigeria today or at any time soon given the paucity of funds plaguing many States of the federation.
Okiro said that the state police would not achieve its desired objective now, stressing that the factors that made it unworkable in the past have not been addressed.
According to him, states and local government areas that could not effectively pay the salaries of their workers would not likely be able to fund their own police force if established.
The retired IGP made this position known on Friday, November 24 while speaking to reporters during the 2023 Convention of the Old Seminarians Association of Nigeria (OSAN), an event hosted by the Clerk to the Senate, Chinedu Akubueze, in Abuja.
Okiro explained that during the advent of the Nigerian police, authorities of the sub-regional institutions had their own police separate from the ones being controlled by the central government.
He expressed the fear that the state police idea might not work now because of lack of funds at both the state and local government levels.
He said: “how can states and local government areas that could not effectively pay the salaries of their workers be able to fund their own police force?”
Okiro said however that state police can only work if Nigeria to adopts the Canadian police model.
The Canadian model, according to him, would involve the states recruiting the police personnel that would be funded by the Federal Government.
“The only way we can have state police in Nigeria is to adopt the Canadian model, where every region has its own police employed by the region and paid by the federal.
“For example, in Nigeria every governor would employ their own police, equip them while they would be paid by the Federal Government.
“Before the advent of what we have now, we had ‘dandoka’, we had police in the West, we also had police in the East.
“Local governments had their Police, but because of the behaviour of the local police officers, during the time of former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon in 1971 or thereabout, he turned it to the Nigeria Police Force.
“I am opposed to the state police because of the benefit of hindsight, how they behaved in those days, unless you want to throw away the benefits of history.”
The former IGP lamented that the police has been left to rot and confronted with so many challenges.
He said: “There is no equipment, no manpower, no welfare. They are demoralized, and frustrated.
“We need to ginger the police to do something, by encouraging them.”
“I have equally said time without number, everything has advantages and disadvantages, merits and demerits.
“If you adopt state police, the state government that cannot pay teachers, nurses and doctors, can they pay the police?
“You cannot afford to owe police one month salary, insecurity will be at the highest level in that state. If the state governments can’t pay the civil servants, I wonder how they can pay the police.”
He appealed to the federal government to invest heavily on equipping and training of the police in order to tackle the current insecurity in the country.
Okiro said: “There is gross insecurity in the country. You know Nigeria is part of the world. Insecurity is a global issue, but every country sits down to plan and to devise methods to check insecurity.
“In Nigeria, the government is equally trying to check insecurity. You cannot get 100 per cent but you can be sure you have done your best and leave the rest to God.
“The government should ensure that security agencies are well equipped and trained. Police is short of manpower, they should recruit more people and give them equipment to solve the problem.
“You cannot solve the problem of insecurity with bare hand. We are in a modern, digitalised world.
“So, you fight insecurity with technology. The government should do something to ensure that security agencies are well equipped to confront these criminals, because the criminals go to the internet, they read. So, they are ahead of the security agencies.
“For you to succeed, the security agencies should be ahead of them and tackle them before they do what they want to do.”
The Clerk to the Senate in his welcome address, identified lack of patriotism among Nigerians as a major ill bedeviling the country.
Akubueze noted: “The Nigerian society is bedeviled by self-imposed ills. occasioned by our lack of collective sense of patriotism which, ordinarily should emphasize love for the nation rather than undue recourse to ethno-religious cleavages and clannish leanings.
“Here in OSAN, we are set to chart a new course of national consciousness aimed at cementing the bonds that hold us together as Nigerians rather than the dissimilarities that tend to tear us apart.
“Our sense of fraternity is one that recognizes the fact that we are of diverse ethnic extractions, yet bonded together by a common heritage, a scenario that has helped in fostering love, camaraderie and collective sense of responsibility and purposefulness within our rank and file.
“Of course, we have no doubts whatsoever that OSAN is an Association whose future prosperity is guaranteed, a brotherhood of likeminded individuals whose members would, within the next few years, seize the opportunities open to them to advance their wellbeing as well as that of the larger Nigerian society.
“To actualize our dreams within a record time, all hands must be on deck. We must pull resources together, both human and material in order to create a prosperous and glorious future.”
