Insecurity: We Need State, LG Police Quickly, Says Olawepo-Hashim

Former presidential candidate and All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim has pleaded with President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly to put the party’s decentralized policing policy into effect in order to stop the nation’s growing wave of violence, bloodshed, and kidnapping.

Civil society groups, under the aegis of the Civil Society Joint Action Group, said last week that 2,423 persons had been killed, while 1,872 others had been abducted in the eight months of President Tinubu’s administration.

The group added insecurity had persisted over the last three administrations, with 24,816 Nigerians killed and 15,597 persons abducted in the last administration of President Buhari, between 2019 and 2023.

Decrying the development, Olawepo-Hashim, in a statement, said that the barbaric killings and kidnappings were condemnable.

Lamenting that rampaging gangs of terrorists and kidnappers moving like a guerrilla movement around most states in Nigeria, the business-cum-politician said: “I really do not understand the hesitation on the part of the President and the party leadership to lead the charge. “Many State governments and Local Government Councils are being controlled by APC. The Party also controls the National Assembly and the majority of state houses of Assembly. So, it means the party can obtain the Legislative consensus within one week to bring to birth State Policing.”

For some time now, there has been a clamour for the establishment of the State Police Force as opposed to what was laid down in Section 214 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution. This is a result of the deteriorating situation of the security system in Nigeria.

Olawepo-Hashim argued that while the immediate creation of local police would not stop all the problems of insecurity in Nigeria, it would solve about 50 per cent of it, noting “We cannot let the bloodletting continue and carry on as if we are confused on what is to be done to stop it.”

Credit: Vanguard