By James Isaac
The Senator representing Kebbi South in the Senate, Garba Maidoki has posited that it will be a misplacement of priorities,if Nigeria is talking of State Police at this time when States can hardly meet their obligation in terms of payment of salaries and provision of basic education
In his opinion, as noble as the issue of State Police is,going by the level of Nigeria’s democratic maturity, the nation is not yet ripe for it as will be open to abuse by State Governors who will hijack it and use it for their political gains.
The Senator made this position known to journalists by on Tuesday while fielding questions on the state of insecurity in Nigeria.
“You see, the concept of State Police is an excellent idea, but given the level of our democracy in Nigeria, i will not support it, not because the concept is not good. Look at State Independent Electoral Commission, can you tell me one State, even the so called learned States in the Soutth West, where State Independent Electoral Commission,the Governors allowed them to do their work in the service of their people?.”
“As iam talking to you today, some States are owing teachers’ salaries, they are owing other civil servants allowances, Nigeria is broke, if you don’t know it , know it, we are living on borrowed money. Where will the money come to Nigeria to finance State Police?. You can not even finance education, primary education; and you want to take the money and do State Police, and if you do State Police, what is the likelihood that it will not be like they are controlling INEC , State INEC?, ” he enthused.
Speaking on the general insecurity in the country, he acknowledged that a lot of gains have been made but decried in the strongest terms a situation whereby, the Military and other security agencies had to wait for State Governors to give them counterpart funding for them to carry out their duties, stressed that the National Assembly appropriated enough money for security agencies to carry out their duties.
“We have a memorandum of understanding with the Nigeria Security Chiefs, what they were going to deliver at the end of this year. We are waiting to see that the money we give them, they have delivered on their promise. If they didn’t, we will tell The President that we had….before we confirmed them, we had an agreement, we have the Key Performance Indicators together with them. At the end of this year, we are going to check the KPIs. And we will tell Nigerians where they stand on those KPIs”Senator Maidoki.
