Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has declared that the creation of state police is now imperative in view of the growing insecurity in Nigeria.
Obasanjo said state police would be a better option than community policing. The former president stated this when the leadership of the National Association of Ex-Local Government Chairmen in Nigeria paid him a courtesy visit in Abeokuta on Wednesday.
A statement by Kehinde Akinyemi, his special assistant on media, indicated that the visit was led by the pioneer national chairman of the group, Albert Asipa.
Obasanjo, who commended the body, said developments in the country have shown that some local chairmen were better than even the top elected leaders.
The former president while responding to one of the speakers, Chinwe Monu-Olarewaju’s submission on the creation of community police, noted that it was high time the Nigerian government curbed the wave of insecurity to resolve crimes such as terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, banditry, cultism, among others.
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“The situation in Nigeria concerns everyone, particularly, the case of terrorism. The case has gotten over the issue of community police. It is now state police. It is from that state police that we can now be talking about community police.”
He also spoke on the need to strengthen the traditional system and the local government administration, “which I prepared during the popular Murtala/Obasanjo Administration because I believe that there is a need to enable that tier of government to work truly as a local government. They have their own executive, judiciary and legislature.
“They were working and they were very visible, building and managing roads, looking into education, health, local administration, agriculture, but they were all gone,” Obasanjo said.
The former president said that the experience the former chairmen had in local government administration was enough to aspire for higher posts, stressing that some of them have the competence, ability and integrity to get to these posts.
Obasanjo, who was presented with a letter of a life patron, assured that he would look into their request, assuring further that he would be available on request for their needs at all times.
Earlier, Ashipa had told the ex-president why they decided to come together in all the 774 local governments in the country, declaring, “We can also contribute to the economy and political developments of the country.
“And realising your position as the father of local government in Nigeria, we need you to actualise our goals, hence this all-important visit.”
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