This was disclosed by the commission’s Executive Secretary, Anthony Ojukwu, in an interaction at a stakeholders’ dialogue on state police organised by the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre in Abuja.
The PUNCH reported that bandits invaded the Kuriga area of the Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State about a week ago, shooting indiscriminately at people before whisking away the victims.
The incident has since triggered a national outrage, with Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Amnesty International, the Parents-Teachers Association of Nigeria, Nigeria Union of Teachers and the House of Representatives condemning the attack.
But Ojukwu emphasised that such a disaster could have been averted if the nation had not prioritised the protection of the elite and affluent in the society at the expense of the masses.
This was even as the human rights crusader drummed support for the introduction of state police to tackle banditry and other security challenges ravaging the country.
He said, “Insecurity in this country is a result of bad governance. There is no argument about that. However, do we have to wait until there is good governance? Even in societies where you have good governance, they don’t joke with the issue of security. We are at a crossroads where every aspect of our life as Nigerians is not working. For me, the greatest attraction was the issue of state police tackling insecurities.
“We have so many complaints about the federal police. Look at the origin. It started from being something the colonial master introduced to force us to pay taxes. So ab initio, it was formed to protect the authorities.
“When we now got our independence, there was no concerted effort to re-orientate the Nigerian police. That was the issue. These guys are just protecting the elite, particularly the executive and legislature. Governors have a convoy of 1,000 policemen,leaving the rest of us unprotected.
“That is why you can go on a road that stretches about 10km and you won’t see one policeman. That is also why you can come into a secondary school and take away 282 students. Do you even know what 282 students look like? If you want to bring in luxury buses, you will need about three or four of them to pack them. And if you decide to use motorcycles, you need about 200 to lift these children.
” How did these people go about it without being noticed? Well, I am not a data analyst. But from what I heard, the number of policemen guarding all these rich individuals is far more than the ones left to look after the rest of us.”
Speaking further, the NHRC boss stated that unless the entire federal policing system is revamped to give way to state police, random incidences of abduction and other forms of insecurities may continue unabated.
According to him, it was the same systemic failure of police following years of oppression that birthed the “EndSars revolution that almost brought the nation’s security apparatus to its knees.
“That is why they oppress and do all the kinds of things they do to us. That was exactly why we had to go on the #EndSars protest in 2020. In fact, as a human rights worker, I got frustrated and asked, ‘Can this policing system ever be corrected or do we have to clean out the entire police and start afresh? We keep hearing they need training. But these officers have been trained over and again with different manuals, yet it is not working.
“This is why I believe we can decide how this state police will be. It is in our hands. We are going to make the laws and guidelines to guard the state police. We can even formulate a policy that before the state police can arrest anybody, there must be an intelligence investigation report saying that the preliminary probe has been conducted and this person is likely to have done wrong.”
A professor of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Jos, Prof Etannibi Alemika, however, disagreed with him on the need to introduce state police.
The don wondered why Nigerians should be talking about deploying police at the state level when it is obvious that their functions would be hijacked by the governors and influential figures within their domains.
“I can give you several reasons why state police won’t work. For instance, are you aware recruitment of officers will be dominated by indigenes of each state? What this also means is that a place like Lagos will probably have over 45 per cent of officers coming from people in that state. Think about it.
“It is also possible for people like me if I am from Kogi but living in Abuja to return and take a prominent role at the expense of those who are residents there. Instead, why are people not talking about policing at the local government level instead of the states”, he queried.
