The Director-General of Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Commission, Seye Oyeleye, has traced the rising insecurity across Nigeria to the dubious nature of the country’s federal system.
While echoing the growing call for state policing, Oyeleye noted that unless the nation reviews its laws to allow the component states to take charge of their internal security, it will continue to struggle to contain different hues of insecurity.
In an interview published by the PUNCH newspaper on Monday, the DAWN boss called for an enabling law that will allow the states to set up proper police units and equip the personnel with necessary weapons to effectively battle crimes and criminality within their enclaves.
“Why can’t we have state police? I argued that if Plateau had had state police, maybe the Mangu attack where a lot of people were killed might not have happened; because a lot of recruitment would have come from local areas. If you can recruit your personnel from within a community, you will feel safer. If I want to go and talk to the policeman, I will go to the one that grew up in my area. So, what I will just say is that the issue we are confronting now is different from what we confronted five years ago,” he said.
Oyeleye also reflected on the Western Security Network, code-named Amotekun, which he described as a success story for the Commission.
The idea of establishing a regional security network for the Southwestern region was conceived by the commission and sold to the governors to engender a better and more efficient security architecture across the region.
“When Amotekun was being created the fear was it would be turned into tools by some people. Five years down the road, has it been turned into tools? No. We have to crush that demon that is holding us down. A federal country like Nigeria cannot survive on one police force. The United Kingdom has about 43 or 44 different Police Forces and their population is below us. But in Nigeria, we want the IGP of Police to say I am the Inspector General of Police for Nigeria. No, it’s not working. The metropolitan police in the UK has its head of police, Manchester has its own too.” he noted.
He challenged the governors of the southwestern states to be more alive to their responsibilities as he hinted that the Commission is working with relevant stakeholders to take a critical look at the security situation in the southwest and come up with better strategies to ensure a safe and secure environment for the people of the region.
“The governors must not be despondent. They should continue to think of new ways to fight insecurity which we always do at DAWN. New ways of confronting the present realities in the area of security. That’s the job of a governor. And we must send hope and not hopelessness. We know there is a problem, and some of us are already sitting down and thinking of ways of solving that problem,” he quipped.
