Olawepo-Hashim Wants Decentralisation of Police to Halt Security Challenges

Deji Elumoye in Abuja

A Chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Mr. Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has called on the APC national leadership, President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly leadership to, as a matter of urgency, implement the party policy of decentralisation of policing to halt the seemingly unending high profile crime of killings and kidnappings across the country.

The former presidential candidate spoke at  in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on the heels of the abduction and killing, last Thursday, of Olu Koro, in Ekiti Local Government Area of the State, His Royal Highness, Oba Olusegun  Aremu, a retired Army General.

Before the Olu Koro incident, on January 29, gunmen also killed two Ekiti monarchs – the Onimojo of Imojo, Oba Olatunde Olusola, and the Elesun of Esun Ekiti, Oba Babatunde Ogunsakin.

In the same area, assailants attacked a school bus and whisked away five pupils of the Apostolic Faith Group of Schools and three teachers, who were later released after payment if ransom by their parents and relatives.

Olawepo-Hashim maintained that the barbaric killing was condemnable and represented another sordid episode in the unending killings of community leaders and their subjects by rampaging gangs of terrorists/kidnappers moving like a guerrilla movement round most states in Nigeria.

 “I really do not understand the hesitation on the part of the president and the party leadership to lead the charge. Many State governments and Local Government Councils are being controlled by APC.

“The party also controls the National Assembly. Majority of State Houses of Assembly. So, it means the party can obtain the legislative consensus within one week to bring to birth state policing,” he said.

He argued that while immediate creation of local police would not stop all the problem of insecurity in Nigeria, it would solve about 50  per cent of it, adding that “we cannot let the bloodletting continue and carry on as if we are confused on what is to be done to stop  it”.

For some time now, there has been a clamour for the establishment of state police as opposed to what was laid down in Section 214 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution.

This is as a result of the deteriorating situation of the security system in Nigeria. Some other reasons for this clamour are that: The geographical area of Nigeria is too large for a central police command as well as the fact that policing citizens should be the responsibility of the respective states and not that of the federal government.

Not a few Nigerians had argued that centralised police system is not only inadequate but cannot meet the security need of the country and the people.