A former governor of Oyo State, Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala, on Tuesday blamed the current spate of insecurity on the relegation of the Nigeria police in the security architecture in the country.
Apart from this, he said the Nigeria Police had been grossly underfunded by successive government, leading to demoralisation among men of the force.
Alao-Akala, who spoke Tribune Online, said it was unfortunate that the Federal Government had relegated the Nigeria police on issues of international security in the country.
He said the police should be at the forefront of the efforts at maintaining internal security, regretting that the federal government had made the police subordinate to the military in the fight against insecurity in the country.
According to him, the development had reduced the commitment level of the police as the military had taken over many of the duties they were supposed to undertake.
The former governor noted that the country could still win the war on insecurity when issues are addressed accordingly.
He said: “The internal security of any country should be in the hands of a single force and in the Nigeria situation, the Nigeria Police should be in the forefront and not the armed forces of Nigeria, we are not giving a prominent and proper place to the police in operation of internal security in Nigeria, we should try as much as possible to bring the Nigeria Police Force to the front burner of internal security of this nation.
“When you do that along with adequate funding, adequate training, adequate motivation things will go on well. The Army has taken over the job of the police and this has affected the security architecture of this country, government should try as much as possible not lay much emphasis on establishment of armed forces formation but should lay emphasis on the setting up of more police formations, more police station and more area commands if possible ad they should engage in mass recruitment.
“The police college where these people will be trained should be well funded; we don’t expect them to bring half baked police constable into the street because they will misbehave. Proper recruitment should be done and the necessary prerequisite qualifications needed to work in the police force are followed and they make sure that they obey the rules and laws of recruitment.
“For Nigeria to move forward on security, we should properly fund the Nigeria Police, fund the training and motivate the personnel.”
The former governor disagreed that the military took over internal security because the police were overwhelmed, saying with proper funding and motivation the police could achieve more than the military.
He said: “The police were not overwhelmed and if we say they were overwhelmed it was because they were neglected if they are given the proper place in the security architecture of Nigeria they will not be overwhelmed.
“No well trained police officer will surrender his job to an army officer, we are trained to maintain internal security, it is the job of the police and not the army, if they think they were overwhelmed let them give them the necessary support, the needed funding and tools to work with, lack of logistics is what is causing all these problems for the police.”
Credit: Nigerian Tribune
