• Friday, March 29, 2024
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‘Restructuring, community policing panacea to insecurity’

Reinventing policing in Nigeria

Maruf Olanrewaju, the National President of the Odua Progressive Care Initiative (OPCI), has said the restructuring of the nation where each state would be entitled to set up its own police is paramount to tackle insecurity at local levels in Nigeria.

Olanrewaju, who stated this yesterday in Ilorin while featuring on the ‘News Keg’, a personality programme organized by the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Kwara Council of NUJ, posited that the United States where Nigeria copied its own form of democracy allowed for state and local government police.

The OPCI boss had while commending the Federal Government on the directive of border closure, blaming the spate of insecurity in the past on the porosity of the Nigerian border, says OPCI is directly involved and has played a vital role in assisting security agencies to checkmate criminality.

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Olanrewaju disclosed that the act of insincerity, breach of trust and lack of concern for members’ welfare, were responsible for the formation of the new Yoruba socio-cultural group.

“Besides, OPC is an illegal organization because it has been proscribed and we cannot continue dragging the legality or otherwise of it with the Federal Government. (Olusegun) Obasanjo’s administration has since 2001 proscribed the group.

“But in the case of OPCI, we are duly registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in Abuja and instructed our coordinators across states to do the same with their respective state governments”, he said.

Olanrewaju explained that membership of the socio-cultural group had spread across 15 states in the country, adding that the OPCI had sponsored about 120 members on a scholarship to study abroad among other empowerment initiatives.