There should be police at all levels of govt – Duke

*Says centralised system has failed

Former Cross River state governor and presidential candidate of Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, Donald Duke, has called for the establishment of state and local government police, saying Nigeria’s highly centralised security system cannot effectively confront terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and other violent crimes across the country.

He said the country must localise policing because effective security depended more on intelligence gathered within communities than on the deployment of armed personnel after crimes had occurred.

According to him, Nigeria has failed to substantially redesign its security architecture since the end of the Civil War in 1970.
“You really have not updated your security architecture since 1970. It is only recently that more military divisions were created, but anything that is essential must be local. You have to localise it,” he said.

He said the proposal for state police, and, where necessary, local government police, was appropriate, provided that the judiciary was strengthened and stringent safeguards were introduced against abuse.

“You have got to decentralise your policing. The idea of state police, even local government police, is right.
“Have it and set the guidelines, but you must strengthen the judiciary because there must be an institution everyone reports to when things go wrong,” he said.

Duke dismissed arguments that governors could turn state police into instruments of political intimidation, saying the federal police had also faced allegations of being used by presidents and other powerful officeholders.

“If you say state police will be abused, the national police will also be abused by the president. It is not only governors who can abuse the police. Set it up and put stringent guidelines in place,” he said.
The PRP presidential candidate added that intelligence gathering should be the principal responsibility of decentralised police formations because residents were better positioned to identify suspicious movements and emerging threats within their communities.
“Eighty per cent of security is intelligence. You cannot be in Sokoto and expect to know what is happening in Calabar. You need local people to gather that intelligence.
“Only about 20 per cent of policing is enforcement. Their main preoccupation should be intelligence gathering.”
He described as embarrassing Nigeria’s failure to infiltrate Boko Haram and develop reliable advance intelligence on the terrorist organisation after years of insurgency.
“It is a shame that after almost 20 years of Boko Haram, we don’t have adequate intelligence on them.
“We have not infiltrated their ranks. We ought to have infiltrated their ranks by now to know what they will do next,” he said.
Duke compared Nigeria’s structure with the United States, where the National Guard gives individual states access to locally based security formations while remaining subject to defined federal authority.
“In the United States, they have what they call the National Guard, which is military and it is in every state. It is really like having a division in every state. They have decentralised security,” he stated.
The former governor also traced the expansion of terrorism, kidnapping and banditry partly to extreme poverty and the absence of legitimate economic opportunities.
He recalled the Maitatsine uprising of the late 1970s and early 1980s, noting that violent movements often gained ground in deeply impoverished communities.
“The northeastern part is the poorest part of the North. You find that those things are exacerbated in those areas,” he said.
“Now, it is creeping all over the North and coming down South.”
He said criminal activity became particularly difficult to combat when young people discovered that kidnapping and banditry could yield sums far beyond what legitimate employment offered them.
“A kidnapper kidnaps someone and gets N20 million. You then tell him to take a steady job that pays N250,000. It cannot work.
“He has already tasted blood, and it becomes very difficult to wean him off it,” he said.
Duke added that policing reforms must, therefore, be supported by education, employment and wider measures aimed at making citizens economically productive.
He said security could not be achieved solely through military deployments while poverty and hopelessness continue to supply criminal groups with recruits.
“The reason we need a government is to ensure the utmost productivity of our citizens within a safe and orderly environment. If people are productive and the environment is safe, what more should the government do? That is the foundation of a stable country,” he said.