The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu has said that the Federal Government and its functions needed to be trimmed in order to ensure effective administration.
He also stated that Nigeria’s security situation would only improve if the police is decentralised, allowing state police to operate.
According to NAN, the DSP said, “We believe that the Federal Government as presently constituted is too big and we need to adjust it. In a situation where you have in the concurrent list only about sixteen items, most of the other things are on 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 that: things like arbitration, agriculture, environment and such issues. Some of these things should go to the concurrent list and even Police,” he said.
Speaking about the police, the Deputy President of the Senate pointed out that each state varied in the kind of security challenges and the kind of policing required.
“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 there is a federal system, has a unitary type 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.
“But we need to first take Nigerians to the level where they will understand this.”
Omoleye Omoruyi… an apprentice web/game developer, novelist, sensitive to happenings in the world. Meet him @Lord_rickie on Twitter/Instagram
Leave a reply