A former presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the party, and the National Assembly to decentralize policing to curb killings and kidnappings across Nigeria.
He said this in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, while reacting to the abduction and murder of Oba Olusegun Aremu, a retired Army General, at Olu Koro, Ekiti Local Government Area of the State.
Before the Olu Koro incident, on January 29, gunmen also killed two Ekiti monarchs – the Onimojo of Imojo, Oba Olatunde Olusola, and the Elesun of Esun Ekiti, Oba Babatunde Ogunsakin.
Also in the same area, the assailants attacked a school bus and whisked away five pupils of the Apostolic Faith Group of Schools, three teachers, and the bus driver.
Olawepo-Hashim maintained that the barbaric killing is condemnable and represented another sordid episode in the unending killings of community leaders and their subjects by rampaging gangs of terrorists/kidnappers moving like a guerrilla movement round most states in Nigeria.
According to him, “I really do not understand the hesitation on the part of the President and the party leadership to lead the charge. Many State governments and Local Government Councils are being controlled by APC. The Party also controls the National Assembly and Majority of State Houses of Assembly. So, it means the party can obtain the Legislative consensus within one week to bring to birth State Policing.”
For some time now, there has been a clamour for the establishment of State police as opposed to what was laid down in Section 214 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution. This is as a result of the deteriorating situation of the security system in Nigeria.
Those clamouring said Nigeria is too large for a central police command, saying policing should be a responsibility of states not the Federal Government.
Olawepo-Hashim argued that while immediate creation of local police would not stop all the problem of insecurity in Nigeria, it would solve about fifty percent of it.
Insecurity: Olawepo-Hashim calls for state, local government policing