State police: Falana urges clear jurisdiction, warns against oppression
Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has called for fine-tuned policies to guide the implementation of the state police system in the country.
Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, also justified the creation of state police across the federation when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s programme, ‘Inside Sources With Laolu Akande,’ on Friday.
The lawyer said, “We must go back to the provisions of the Constitution. It’s not unusual in a federation to have Federal Government police and state police but again, we have to go back to the drawing table and finetune our policies before we have state police. We must assure our people.”
Over the years, insecurity has been a hindrance to Nigeria’s economic development amidst several cases of terrorist attacks, banditry, kidnappings, amongst others.
On Thursday, two communities, Agojeju Odo and Abejukolo in Omala Local Government Area of Kogi State, were invaded by gunmen.
No fewer than 19 people have been killed while yet to be ascertained number of houses have been razed.
Eyewitnesses told one of our correspondents in Lokoja., the state capital on Friday that the incident happened the previous day when the gunmen mobilised in what he described as a “reprisal” and invaded the two communities inflicting maximum damages.
On April 7, bandits invaded LEA Primary School and Government Secondary School in Kuriga, a community in the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna AState.
The bandits, in high numbers, wielded guns and caused uproar as they abducted 137 pupils from the schools, including some staff members.
In less than three weeks, however, security operatives rescued the abductees, while a former teacher, Mallam Abubakar lost his life due to health complications.
The kidnappers demanded a N1 billion ransom but the Federal Government noted that no ransom was paid.
Due to such incidents and several past occurences, state governors called for the creation of the state police, noting that this would help reduce insecurity in their respective states.
On March 21, 16 of Nigeria’s 36 states submitted reports on the proposed establishment of state police to the National Economic Council after the Federal and State Governments had resolved to develop modalities to create state police to tackle the country’s security crisis.
However, Falana cautioned that “there are governors in Nigeria that will turn state police into an instrument of oppression because even right now, the federal police is turned into an instrument of oppression.
“So, we must agree that in a federation, every tier of government, every federating unit should be able to enforce its own laws, with its own security apparatus but you must guarantee that there will be no intimidation or oppression of political opponents, either by the Federal Government police, state police or even local government police.
“Right now, we deceive ourselves. We already have decentralisation of police; every community, every estate all have their own private security arrangement, and the majority of them are armed.”
State-owned security outfits created so far include the Civilian Joint Task Force in Borno State, the Amotekun Corps in the South-West geopolitical zone, Ebube Agu in the South-East, Benue Guards in the North Central State, Community Protection Guards in Zamfara, Community Watch Corps in Katsina, the Neighbourhood Watch in Plateau, state-backed vigilante outfits in Niger and Bauchi, amongst others.
