Dr Sebastine Agbinda, a political science lecturer at Moses Orshio Adasu University, Makurdi, has called for the establishment of state and local government police to curb Nigeria’s rising insecurity.
Speaking in Gboko during a discussion on the security crisis in North Central Nigeria, Agbinda said local policing structures would enhance intelligence gathering and response at the grassroots.
He proposed that local government police should operate unarmed, focusing on intelligence sharing, while state police would be armed and function under defined rules of engagement.
Agbinda attributed Nigeria’s deep-rooted security challenges to constitutional limitations, stating that “we have a unitary constitution while claiming to practice a presidential system.”
“The presidential constitution allows for local government and state police as it is done in the United States of America (USA), which we modelled our constitution on.
“The USA has the county police, which are the local government police, as well as the state police. They do not have a centralised police,” Agbinda said.
He further called on the National Assembly to expedite action towards the timely passage of the state police bill.
The lecturer emphasised that with both the local government and state police in place, the invasion of communities by terrorists would be resisted.
