The Federal Government believes state police is the way to go in the face of multifaceted security challenges.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made public the government’s new thinking on the security architecture of the country at a summit on national security organised by the Senate.
Osinbajo’s pronouncement on state police received spontaneous applause from participants at the summit, where Senate President Bukola Saraki said the government needed the political will to end the violence in the country.
Osinbajo said: “We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State police and other community policing methods are clearly the way to go.”
He added: “The nature of our security challenges are complex and known. Securing Nigeria’s over 900,000sq km and its 180 million people requires far more men and material than we have at the moment.
“It also requires a continuous reengineering of our security architecture and strategy. This has to be a dynamic process.
“For a country of our size to meet the ‘one policeman to 400 persons’ prescribed by the United Nations would require triple our current police force; far more funding of the police force and far more funding of our military and other security agencies.”
The Vice-President went further to say “The Vice-President said: “This is against the backdrop of the remarkable improvements we have recorded on the most dreaded security challenge we had at a time – the fight against Boko Haram.
“In 2015 when the Buhari administration came on board, much of the North Eastern Nigeria lay in the shadows of the terrorist group. In two and half years since then, our military has done a remarkable job of reclaiming Nigerian territories, rescuing tens of thousands of civilians and routing the Boko Haram. Today, the group is a shadow of itself and has resorted to suicide bombings and other attacks on soft targets in a desperate attention seeking.
“Boko Haram was by no means the only security challenge that we inherited when we took office 2015. Cattle rustling, pronounced especially in the North West of Nigeria, clashes between farmers and herdsmen in the North Central region; militant activities in the South-South and parts of the South West, ethnic agitation in the South East region; there was also the Islamic Movement of Nigeria in Northern Nigeria, increasingly emboldened to challenge the authority of the state.
“I want to say that because of the spread and because of the diversity of these threats, the nation’s security architecture was overstretched as our security became engaged on different battlefronts at the same time.”
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