Nigeria, Security Challenges And Way Forward !! By Otunba Eric Ayoola

Nigeria, Security Challenges And Way Forward !! By Otunba Eric Ayoola.

“The time to act is now before some people, regardless of their good intents turn our nation into a cauldron of ethnic conflict leading to greater and more tragic loss of lives on all sides.

I urge the federal government and state governments to consider the following..

Short term measure .
.. Deploy soldiers now to troubled spots both to flush out the well known criminal residing in the forest and to stop ethnic cleansing. That has to stop immediately.

Long term measure .

On the centralised police issue….

We need the 36 states of the federation to have their own police service too.

Nigeria is frankly the only federal system that has a centralised police service.

Even in the UK, we dont have a UK Inspector General of Police..

In the UK, there are 43 geographic police forces in England and Wales plus the British Transport Police, Civil Nuclear Police and the Ministry of Defence Police. Each lead by a Chief Constable/Commissioner .

The Nigeria police service is an aberration. And that’s the crux of the security challenges that we face.

The less able the police are to deal with crime, the more it worsens.

The more the crime situation worsens, the less able are the police to deal with it.

So how to break this conundrum?

Provide more federal police, train them well, resource them properly and incentivise them appropriately.

Above all, implement state police.

I have always been an advocate for state police with each state having it’s own fully functional, well trained, well equipped and well organized police service.

This , with the federal police service, will create a very difficult terrain for criminals who currently take full advantage of our overwhelmed, under staffed and under resourced federal police service.

Alas, 36 state governors, 109 well paid senators and hundreds of House of Rep members seem totally and utterly incapable and inept at effecting the constitutional review and amendments that would make state police possible. This is truly perplexing.

Meanwhile we are given to ethnicising crime and blaming one ethnic group for all the crimes committed in the nation.

We prefer ragtag militia and one ethnic warlord and his brand of jungle justice as the panacea and the hero to save us all from kidnappers and other criminals.

We do need to get our acts together and prevail on political leaders to do the needful and bring state police about via a constitutional review.

Many thanks.

By; Otunba Eric Ayoola.