Leaders and experts have continued to propose the way forward for Nigeria to overcome the problem of insecurity, a former Enugu State Governor, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, believes state police was not an option.
The former governor was of the opinion that adopting state police as a solution to the current security challenges would be a wrong move, arguing that the factors that led to the abolition of regional police were still very much available.
“That is not the solution. State police will not work in Nigeria,” he said while answering questions as a guest on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today on Sunday.
“Remember that we had some form of state police – regional police, we had an ordinance of 1916 that formerly established regional police. There were factors that led to the abolition of state police.
“All those factors that led to the abolition of the regional police and formal entry into the central police have not changed. Nigeria is organic, it is one unit and what that means is that if the eye is having a problem, the brain could have a problem,” he added.
Nnamani maintained that having state police would only be effective if it was made to be uniform in all the 36 states of the federation.
He warned that if state police were not made uniform and standardized in all the states, it would end up being what he called inherent inequality.
The lawmaker opined that it would be an imbalance to have state police in a state like Lagos where the poverty rate is very low compared to other states with a higher rate of poverty.
Speaking on the way forward, the senator called for a conference of ethnic nationalities to help address the imbalance said to have created by the constitution.
“Nigeria is a country of multi-ethnic African nationalities – those ethnic nationalities are in Nigeria on basis of inequality.
“The constitutions that have been derived from all these fora are inefficient, unequal, and unjust because those constitutions are results of political machinations of people who got the people to make the constitutions together,” said Nnamani.
He added, “What we need is a conference of ethnic nationalities on equal basis. Multi-ethnic nationalities have to conference and produce a system that is equitable, fair, and just.
“The system, as it is – the National Assembly, State assemblies…, are inherently unjust because of the way they were derived.”
