Former Governor of Rivers, Celestine Omehia, has cautioned Senate President Godswill Akpabio and the National Assembly, NASS, against rushing the passage of the State Police Bill into law.
Mr Omehia gave the warning in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Monday. He said that “creating state police structures would pose a major threat to democracy across the 36 states and the 774 Local Government Areas, LGAs.”
According to him, “establishing state police could trigger ethnic dominance where majority ethnic groups might weaponise the security apparatus to oppress and intimidate minorities.”
He also said that “instead of an accelerated passage of the bill by the NASS, there should be an extensive public debate and a national public hearing, rather than leaving the crucial decision entirely 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 said. “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.”
The former governor noted that “the existing Nigeria Police Force, NPF, and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, could effectively secure the nation if properly managed and funded.” He advocated that “instead of creating state police, the Federal Government should recruit willing applicants directly into the NPF to boost its numerical strength.”
Sharing his experience, Omehia recalled how his administration “successfully utilised the NPF to crush cultism and insurgency during his tenure as Rivers governor in 2007.” “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 introduced 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 successfully neutralised forest-dwelling bandits at the time.”
He noted that “illegal local militias already existed in various villages under the control of politicians and council chairmen, warning that a formal state police could worsen the situation.” He warned that “in the northern part of the country, bandits could disguise themselves and get recruited into the state police, thereby hijacking the state security machinery.”
He emphasised that “state police would lead to gross abuse of human rights and the ultimate destruction of democratic pillars at the grassroots level.” He appealed to President Bola Tinubu and the senate leadership “to look deeply into the existential threats before taking further action on the bill.”