Adetutu Folasade-Koyi, Abuja
Former Senate leader, Mr. Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN), has thrown his weight behind the amendment of the Nigerian constitution to allow for the establishment of state police.
Ndoma-Egba told Daily Sun that the country’s political structure negates the essence of true federalism and linked the security challenges in the country to the centralisation of police by the Federal Government..
“The current structure of the federation has become burdensome and a drag. This can be seen from a number of indices, like the ratio between our recurrent and capital budget, the collapse of security, the collapse of our institutions, decay of infrastructure, the insolvency of states, worsening corruption. With our current structure things can only get worse. The time has come for us to interrogate the paradigms for our federalism. The engine of our current structure has knocked .I am not aware of any other federal structure other than Nigeria with a central police.
“The incongruity of our system can be seen from a simple example. A person commits a state offence in a remote village in say Osun State.He is arrested by a federal police convicted by a state court and imprisoned in a federal correctional institution. This is a most awkward arrangement and inconsistent with all notions and tenets of federalism. Our security has collapsed under the weight and inefficiency of centralisation,” said Ndoma-Egba.