Senate to amend Constitution to allow for State Police

The debate on whether a state government-controlled police force, popularly referred to as the state police, would be beneficial to the country has been going on for years.

The Nigerian Senate, on Tuesday, began making moves to see to the creation of the state police.

According to The Cable, the Senate directed its constitution review committee to begin the process of amending the constitution to allow for the creation of the state police.

The Senate President Bukola Saraki had lamented the killings in Plateau State that left over 100 dead.

Jonah Jang, a Plateau State senator, had raised a motion, calling the attention of the senators to the killings.

Saraki, speaking on the killings, said they had advised the executive arm of government on how to fight the insecurity. He said:

These are acts of criminality and we should not encourage any other colouration to it, be it religious or otherwise. This is criminality. And as such, we have a role to ensure that we must address this criminality to see how we can fight it.

We have spoken on many platforms and made suggestions to the Executive on the fact that there is a need for an urgent review of the security architecture of the nation.

The debate in the British House of Lords also raises this point – how do we think this would affect our economy and investments if we continue to have this kind of security climate? We must see this issue of insecurity not only from the point of view that there is danger and insecurity, but there is also a danger to our economy — especially if we want to grow our economy.

We as the senate must come up with our own actions. We do not need to flog the issue. We have told the executive what to do. We have told them privately and we have told them publicly. However, on our own part, we must decide on what we need to do.