Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan has said state police is pivotal to addressing the issue of insecurity in the country.
Jonathan made this statement on Monday in Abuja at a national security dialogue which was organised by the Nigerian house of representatives.
He opined that the state police should be established on a structure that makes it elusive to be abused.
“The issue today is very critical. One thing is that we don’t need to debate whether we should have state police or not. I think that matter has been concluded. The issue is the operations of the police,” Jonathan said.
The former president said security in Bayelsa was awful in the late 90s, noting that it was a security architecture in the structure of state police that rescued the situation.
“So there is no way we can manage internal security if states would not have their police,” he added.
Jonathan further said the concern is how state police would carry out their operations without any interference and control of governors and other players.
“But how would the state police function vis-á-vis the national security architecture,” he asked.
“When I set up the 2014 national dialogue, during that period we had lots of challenges in the country.
“People were agitating so many areas but one thing that the almost 500 (people) agreed without much ado was the issue of state police.”
He also said state police is not new to Nigeria noting that it was in operation during the military regime.
“You know in this country, we operated it before. Why is it that the military scrapped it? It was because of the abuse and that is the area we should concentrate on,” he said.
“How do we manage the state police so it would not be abused by state political actors?
“If state political actors are abusing the state police and using the state police to harass and make life miserable for people who do not belong to their political parties, would the commander-in-chief sit down and watch or would he order the military to go and overrun the state police? Of course, that would bring crisis.”
The former president said the state police should, however, be planned in a way that will not make it collision with the national security architecture of the country.
“These things need to be done carefully,” he said.
“So, if we are talking about state police, we must also rejig INEC and the police must not be used against or to the advantage of any political party.”
“You know in this country, we operated it before. Why is it that the military scrapped it? It was because of the abuse and that is the area we should concentrate on,” he said.
“How do we manage the state police so it would not be abused by state political actors?
“If state political actors are abusing the state police and using the state police to harass and make life miserable for people who do not belong to their political parties, would the commander-in-chief sit down and watch or would he order the military to go and overrun the state police? Of course, that would bring crisis.”
“These things need to be done carefully,” he said.
“So, if we are talking about state police, we must also rejig INEC and the police must not be used against or to the advantage of any political party.”
Jonathan advised that the conduct of elections should then be improved to require minimal participation of the police.
“So, the national assembly needs to look into all these. These are the areas that we have to concentrate on,” he said.
“The issue of the need for states to have their own police is not negotiable. There is no way we can continue this kidnapping that is going on in this country.
“Commercial kidnapping started around 2006, I don’t want to go into that history. But it started in the Niger Delta. Now it is all over the country.
“The only thing that can help us if we cannot stop it completely at least we reduce it to the barest minimum is for states to have their police.”
Speaking further, he mentioned that the state police must be well equipped with sophisticated weapons, thus, making them fit to combat aggression from criminals.
“Sometimes people say the state police should have limited weapons, that the calibre of weapons they should have should be limited. That is an area that must also be cleared, we must be careful with it,” he said.
“I am not expecting states to have rockets and missiles, but the conventional weapons if you look at the calibre of weapons criminals use, the states must have superior weapons or at least equal.
“If you make the state (police) have weapons that are inferior to the ones that the criminals are using, then you are asking them to commit suicide in the field.
“So we must not even go there in terms of limiting the capacity of the state police. A state that has enough resources must equip the police very well and that state can also assist other states that have challenges.”