Former Rivers State Governor, Celestine Omehia, has cautioned Senate President Godswill Akpabio and the National Assembly against hastening the passage of the State Police Bill into law.
Omehia gave the warning in an interview in Abuja on Monday, saying the creation of state police structures could pose a significant threat to democracy across the 36 states and the 774 local government areas in the country.
According to him, establishing state police could encourage ethnic dominance, with majority ethnic groups potentially using the security apparatus to intimidate and oppress minority groups.
He argued that rather than accelerating the passage of the bill, there should be extensive public debate and a nationwide public hearing instead of leaving the decision solely to state assemblies.
”Nigeria is not yet ripe for state police because state governors are likely to convert the personnel into personal militias to hunt down and suppress political opponents.
”He who pays the piper dictates the tune; the governors will fund, equip, and ultimately weaponise these police forces, and at the long run it will result in tribal wars and become an albatross to our democracy,” he said.
Omehia said the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) could effectively secure the country if adequately funded and properly managed.
He advocated recruiting more willing applicants directly into the Nigeria Police Force to strengthen its manpower instead of establishing state police.
Recalling his time as governor of Rivers State in 2007, Omehia said his administration successfully tackled cultism and insurgency using the existing police structure.
”We trained 50 special personnel of the NPF who wore red caps and restored absolute peace to Rivers within six months,” he said.
He added that his administration adopted a “carrot and stick” approach alongside the “C4I” formula to dismantle criminal networks in the state.
According to him, the C4I strategy stands for Command, Control, Communication, Computer, and Intelligence, which helped neutralise forest-based criminal groups at the time.
Omehia further noted that illegal local militias already existed in some communities under the influence of politicians and council chairmen, warning that formal state police structures could worsen the situation.
He also expressed concern that bandits in the northern part of the country could infiltrate state police formations and gain access to state security structures.
According to him, the creation of state police could lead to widespread abuse of human rights and weaken democratic institutions at the grassroots level.
He appealed to President Bola Tinubu and the leadership of the Senate to carefully examine the potential consequences before taking further action on the bill.
