Some policemen abandon their crime-fighting duties, carry bags for wives of VIPs, says El-Rufai

The Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said on Monday a large number of police officers in the country abandoned their duties of fighting crimes and opted to carry bags for wives of Very Important Personalities (VIPs).

The governor, who stated this when he featured on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, decried the killings in Kaduna, saying the situation has overwhelmed the police.

He urged the National Assembly to undertake the amendment of the Nigerian Constitution to give states the control of the police.

El Rufai said: “We’ve always made a very strong argument that one centralised police in a federation does not work. Nigeria is the only country in the world that has only one police force.

“We have made the argument that states should be allowed to have their own police and that even local governments should be allowed to have their own community policing.

“The number of policemen we have in Nigeria is inadequate; it is less than half of what we need and a lot of them are engaged in non-police duties like carrying the handbags of the wives of very important people.

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“We need to have a large footprint of policing in Nigeria and the only way to achieve that in a fast-track manner is to amend the constitution and put police on the concurrent list as recommended by the APC True Federalism Committee so that we have more policing.

“In any case today, more state governments are responsible for the running cost of the police. The Federal Government only pays the salaries of the policemen but the running cost, the logistics, their vehicles, and their fuel are all the responsibilities of state governments.

“So, what are we afraid of? Let us just amend the constitution and allow state policing and in fact, go further and allow the local governments to have their own police. That way, we will have more security footprints.”

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