Lukman Olabiyi and Henry Okonkwo
Former commissioner for lands in Lagos State, Mr. Fola Arthur-Worrey, and the executive director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC), Mr. Okechukwu Nwanguma, have called for equal funding for the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the National Assembly.
Arthur-Worrey, also a former executive secretary of the State Security Trust Fund, and RULAAC submitted that if the same fund that is allocated to the National Assembly were allocated to NPF, the issue of insecurity currently ravaging the country wouldn’t have arisen.
The former commissioner and Nwanguma, made this observation while speaking at a stakeholders’ roundtable on police budget, organised by the group in collaboration with the Nigeria Policing Project (NPP).
In a paper titled, “NPF Financing and Resource Allocation,” Arthur-Worrey said the country should begin to tinker with the idea of sourcing funding for police from sources other than government.
While listing other sources of funding for the police, he said government should begin to look at cutting costs in several areas, to be able to save more money.
He also suggested that policemen travelling for trainings, which gulp so much, should be checked, suggesting that such foreigners should be brought to Nigeria to train its personnel instead.
He argued that it was only when police and government cut down on unnecessary agencies and spending and save money that many issues concerning the police would begin to work out positively.
In his own contribution, Nwanguma observed that rather than adequately fund the Police, the Federal Government, in utter violation of the constitutional prohibition of establishment of other police forces, continued to set up new parallel agencies that unnecessarily duplicate the law enforcement functions of the police.
He stated that the development has ended up creating inter agency rivalry, confusion and conflicts.