Lawrence Nwimo, Awka
Former Deputy Inspector-General of Police, DIG Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Godwin Nwobodo, has criticised the poor attention of the South-East governors to the marginalisation of the region in successive police recruitments in the country.
Nwobodo who was featured as a keynote speaker at the Ikengaonline monthly virtual townhall meeting on Thursday said the South-East governors and other leaders in the region have failed to speak up on the disproportionate recruitment of officers into the Nigerian Police Force.
He said the decision of the federal authorities to replace state of origin with local government as the basis for recruitment has further marginalised the South-East and favoured her Northern counterparts with more states and council areas.
“It was during the President Muhammadu Buhari administration that the Police began to use the local government area as a determining factor for recruitment. You can imagine how many local government areas that states like Kano have compared to the entire South-East region as a whole. Recruiting based on local government is disproportionately against the South-East.
“Our governors are not even bothered and the time has come for them to be concerned about the new system because the local government is not our federating unit, but the state. They can decide to recruit 20 from each state, but let it not be from the council areas.
“Again, the South-East is already shortchanged in terms of the number of states per region. We have only five states whereas other regions have six and above. These differences are what give insight into why state police are sine qua non in the country,” Nwobodo said.
Emphasising the need for state police in the country, the former DIG said that state police have become necessary because the federal police are already overwhelmed. He also said it would put to bed the burning issues of balance and insecurity at the local levels.
“States should be allowed to take their destinies into their own hands through the State Police so that they can recruit the number of people they want, give them adequate training, and provide them the right logistics and welfare to perform.
“It is time the federal legislature looked at the possible amendment of the constitution to this effect because state police in places like the South-East where there are all forms of criminality, will be a better option and a better position to gather intelligence to combat the menace.
“All that it takes is to ensure that the necessary laws establishing the state police are made robust enough to ensure that it covers as many grey areas as possible to ensure it does not become a political tool in the hands of state governors,” he said.
