Insecurity: Again, Osinbajo calls for State police in Nigeria

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has insisted that state police remained the most effective way to secure a big federation like Nigeria. He said the country must be ready to endorse the concept in a bid to address its insecurity challenges. Speaking during an event tagged, ‘Hard Talk’, an interactive evening of discourse with Muslim Professionals […]

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has insisted that state police remained the most effective way to secure a big federation like Nigeria.

He said the country must be ready to endorse the concept in a bid to address its insecurity challenges.

Speaking during an event tagged, ‘Hard Talk’, an interactive evening of discourse with Muslim Professionals held in Lagos, Osinbajo stressed that controlling the police across the country from a central location could be counter-productive.

The discourse, which lasted till the early hours of Sunday, had in attendance many Muslim professional bodies.

According to the Vice President, the current Inspector General of Police was chosen because of his experience in community policing as that is the only way to go in effectively securing the nation.

He said: “You need to have a head of police who is familiar with the community. You find sometimes that a police man who is transferred from Ebonyi state to Zamfara, he doesn’t even understand the language even if they are conspiring against him to kill him, he won’t even know.

“That is why policing everywhere is local and it just has to be local, that is why state police is possibly the long term option. But in the meantime, what we are trying to do is to ensure that we keep reforming the police.

“The current Acting Inspector-General of Police, one of the reasons he was picked is because of his focus on community policing and his experience in community policing.

“So we expect that we can do a lot more with the current Inspector-General of Police, especially looking at how to collaborate at the state level and at the local government level to really devolve the authorities of the police. But security remains a primary concern for us”.