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…calls for decentralisation and establishment of state police
The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu has said for government (especially at the federal level) to work and satisfy the citizenry, its size must be trimmed.
Ekweremadu also called for the decentralisation of the Police and establishment of State Police.
The Deputy Senate President said this in a chat with newsmen on Monday.
His words: “We believe that the Federal Governemnt as presently constituted is too big and we need to adjust it. In a situation where you have in the concurrent list only about 16 items, most of the other things are in the exclusive list.
“It doesn’t make sense: so we need to find a way of trimming the Federal Government to the benefit of the component states so that some of these issues don’t become federal issues and that is the idea of federalism.
“We are looking at things like arbitration, agriculture, environment and such issues. Some of these things should go to the concurrent list and even Police”.
On State Police, he said: “We cannot decentralise the police now because some people are still opposed to it but i think it is beginning to make sense that you cannot be able to deal with our security situation in Nigeria except we change our security architecture.
“There is no place in this world where a federal system has a unitary role of policing which we have now and that is why we will continue to get it wrong in solving our security problems.
“It is not going to work until we change the architecture of our policing: a federal state as big as Nigeria must have to adopt a decentralised police.
“This means that in Sokoto they will create their kind of Police, in Kano they will create their own: the kind of Police that will work in Kano may not necessarily work in Enugu”.
Ekweremadu noted that for fear of abuse by state governments, the central government can create a commission to monitor their (police) activities, like the NJC monitors the judiciary.