Former governor of Kano State, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, has stated that there is a crucial need for the proposed move for the creation of state police to be community-driven.
According to Shekarau, with the involvement of community leaders in grassroots policing, it will be free from the influence of political party affiliates commonly known as “party thugs.”
He stated this while speaking at the Federal University of Technology, Akure, FUTA, during the launch of a book titled ‘The Psychology of Growing Old: A Personal Experience for both Young and Old,’ written by Sehinde Arogbafa.
The former governor maintained that the primary focus of security should be on intelligence gathering rather than relying solely on sophisticated weapons.
Shekarau, who was also a former Minister of Education, harped on the importance of fostering a strong relationship between law enforcement agencies and local communities, stressing that a community-driven approach to policing would enhance trust and cooperation between the police and the people.
“I refuse to call it state police because what people are looking forward to is seeing the regalia of the Nigerian Police at the state level with guns, all the equipment, armoured personnel carriers, APCs, and so on.
“That is not what we want. The Hisbah Guards in Kano don’t even carry a stick, not to mention a gun, but they control everywhere, and people respect it.
“So, what we need is a bottom-up approach. Let the government organise a situation whereby people from the bottom will select those to do the job, but if you allow it to fall into the hands of the government, they will bring party thugs and end up using them to brutalise and terrorise people.
“Nigerian police and the military cannot monitor Nigeria. All in all, we don’t have up to 400,000 policemen in Nigeria to monitor 220 million people.
“Egypt has 80 million people and four million policemen. How do you expect the Nigerian police to monitor everyone? They can’t be everywhere, ” he said.