Lack of Patriotism, Major Evil Bedeviling Nigeria, Says Senate Clerk

*Okiro says govs will kill state police if created

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The Clerk to the Senate, Mr. Chinedu Akubueze, has identified lack of patriotism among Nigerians as a major ill bedeviling the country.
Akubueze stated this at the 2023 Convention of the Old Seminarians Association of Nigeria (OSAN), he hosted in Abuja at the weekend.
Akubueze said, “The Nigerian society is bedeviled by self-imposed ills, occasioned by our lack of collective sense of patriotism which, ordinarily should emphasise love for the nation rather than undue recourse to ethno-religious cleavages and clannish leanings.

“Here in OSAN, we are set to chart a new course of national consciousness aimed at cementing the bonds that hold us together as Nigerians rather than the dissimilarities that tend to tear us apart.

“Our sense of fraternity is one that recognises the fact that we are of diverse ethnic extractions, yet, bonded together by a common heritage, a scenario that has helped in fostering love, camaraderie and collective sense of responsibility and purposefulness within our rank and file.
“Of course, we have no doubts whatsoever that OSAN is an Association whose future prosperity is guaranteed, a brotherhood of likeminded individuals whose members would, within the next few years, seize the opportunities open to them to advance their wellbeing as well as that of the larger Nigerian society.
“To actualise our dreams within a record time, all hands must be on deck. We must pull resources together, both human and material in order to create a prosperous and glorious future.”

Also, speaking with journalists at the occasion, a retired Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Mike Okiro, said the decentralisation of the Nigeria Police Force would not achieve its desired objective because the factors that led to its failure in the past have not been addressed.
The former IGP, who is also an old seminarian, went down memory lane to explain the advent of the Nigerian police, explaining that authorities of the sub-regional institutions had their own police separate from the ones being controlled by the central government.

Noting that the state police idea might not work due to paucity of funds at both the state and local government areas, he wondered how the states and local government areas that could not effectively pay the salaries of their workers would be able to fund their own police.
Okiro, however said the only way the state police could work was for Nigeria to embrace the Canadian model.