Yakassai urges caution over creation of state police

Founding member of Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Tanko Yakassai, has implored the populace to be cautious about the agitation for state policing across the country.

Yakassai made this call on Sunday via his memorandum to the Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, in Abuja.

According to the statesman, the recurrent insecurity in the country was as a result of bad governance, not a lack of security structure.

He said, “We must understand that insecurity in Nigeria is a manifestation of our failure as a nation to prioritise our expenditure and make the required investment in education, agriculture, power, social safety nets and other areas that will impact employment, family income and increase opportunities for young people.

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“No amount of policing will stop a hungry and jobless population from engaging in criminality. In a country where more than half of able-bodied young people and over 30 per cent of the total population are jobless, rising rates of crime is inevitable. No country can effectively police 70 million jobless people.”

Consequently, Yakassai detailed solutions regarding the challenges plaguing the country.

“We must stop spending 70 per cent of our resources to run our government. Invest the resources in the right policy areas and stop diverting public funds from their intended use.

“Unless we do these, we are going to continue to produce an army of jobless young people who will continue to resort to crime as their only survival option.

“Nigeria must stop paying lip service to reforming the federal police by paying adequate attention to their welfare, training, discipline, equipment and then increase their number.

“A nation of 200 million people cannot be adequately covered by a police force of 300,000 personnel that is ill-trained, ill-equipped, ill-motivated and mainly deployed to protect political office holders and other important people, not citizens,” he added.

By Mayowa Oladeji…

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