The Presidential Committee on the Re-organisation of the Nigeria Police Force has rejected the idea of State Police.
The Presidential Committee on the Re-organisation of the Nigeria Police Force has rejected the idea of State Police.
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It has also recommended the scrapping of the Ministry of Police Affairs.
A former Deputy Inspector General of Police and chairman of the committee, Mr. Parry Osayande, disclosed this when he led other members of the committee to the Presidential Villa in Abuja today to submit their report to President Goodluck Jonathan.
The committee based its conclusions on what Mr. Osayande called the inability of state governments to fund their own forces were they to be created.
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In addition, he said that implementing such an idea could lead to the break-up of the country, and described it as irrelevant.
“They (States) cannot afford it,” he said when he spoke to State House correspondents following the submission of the report. “Do you know how much it is to police a country? What we are recommending is that they allow the Police Council to function.”
Commenting on that Council, he noted that the President is the chairman, and its members the chairman of the Police Service Commission, the governors and the Inspector-General of Police. The governors, he said, would bring their policing plan to the Council, which will then decide on what to do.
“We don't need State Police,” he reiterated. “The country will break up, take it from me.”
Mr. Osayande further pointed out that the Constitution provides a trilateral arrangement for organisation and administration of the Nigeria Police Council, the Police Service Commission and the Inspector-General of Police.
"However, it is a known fact that the Nigeria Police Council is inactive, as it hardly meets, and hence does not fulfill its constitutionally-assigned role of administering, organising and generally supervising the Nigeria Police," he said.
On the subject of police funding, he said the committee recommended that it be made a first line charge, or that an intervention/special fund be created to accommodate the needs of the force.
In that regard, he pointed out, the committee supports the 2008 recommendation of the M.D. Yusuf committee on the reform of the Nigeria Police that the Police should henceforth be jointly funded by the three-tiers of government."
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