Abubakar Muhammad: Taking Police Deficiencies To States Without Fixing Existing Failures Will Create More Problems
Assistant Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria (SCSN), Ustaz Abubakar Muhammad, has warned that creating state police without first addressing the shortcomings of the Nigeria Police Force would only transfer existing problems to the states and worsen insecurity.
Speaking during an interview on ARISE NEWS on Wednesday, Muhammad said the council was not opposed to state police in principle but believed the country’s policing challenges should first be resolved before powers are devolved to the states.
He said, “We have to strengthen what we have to make it better, to avoid what we have been seeing all along before we can take these problems to the states. Because taking the problems to the states will create more problems.”
Muhammad warned that moving the current policing structure to the states without reforms would increase security challenges rather than solve them.
He said, “We will end up losing more lives than we are currently because even the regional police arrangement that we have seen privately established has its own problems.”
According to him, Nigeria’s existing policing challenges stem from structural weaknesses that should be addressed before any constitutional changes are implemented.
“Our problem is in the structure that is obtained in the current setting of the force, and lack of professionalism, lack of training, and recruitment process,” he said.
He added, “So we should not rush into diversification, devolution, without addressing the problem. Because if you don’t address the problems now, and you replicate them to other states, we’re talking about 36 states, if you do not address them, you do not look at the problems that we now have in the force, and you take them to states. You are not addressing the problem. You are not solving the problem. You are relocating the problem to other places, and they will continue.”
Muhammad also questioned the ability of many states to sustain their own police forces.
He said, “A recent analysis found that five out of six states do not have the fiscal discipline to fund their police force. So, this type of arrangement in states where they are not able to pay salaries, they are diverting security funds. They are owing pensioners. Now, they want to empower them with armed forces. So, we have to look at that as well. People who are not able to do this, we should look at that very well before we now take the police to the states.”
Faridah Abdulkadiri
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