National Executive Council (NEC), has acknowledged receipt of report on the creation of state police from the governors of the 36 states of the federation.
Addressing State House correspondents at the end of the 146th NEC meeting chaired Vice President Kashim Shettima, Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna state said all the governors are unanimous about the desirability of the creation of state police.
“Today, one of the discussions we had at the NEC meeting was the update on the creation of state police. As you are aware, there was a submission by States toward the establishment of state police.
”Today, about 36 states have already made their submission for establishing state police in Nigeria. And I can say here that from what is available, virtually most of the states are in agreement with the establishment of state police in Nigeria.
“The council decided to step down the discussion until we receive a report from the secretariat. After that, there will be deliberation at the next NEC meeting,” he said.
He also highlighted a resolution from the previous NEC meeting calling for further stakeholder engagement to refine the proposal.
“And not only that, there’s also a resolution in the last NEC meeting, which is today the Secretariate have also agreed on that, there will be further stakeholder engagement after the panel and deliberation by the members of the NEC.
“Considering the fact that virtually every state has their peculiarity in terms of the problem we are having of insecurity in our own states. Knowing fully well that we have a lot of ungoverned space in Nigeria, and also that we have a lot of deficit in terms of number of boots on ground, looking at the fact that a lot of security agencies, the police, the army and other relevant security agencies have no personnel to cover all the ungoverned spaces, that is the reason why most of us agreed that establishment of state police in Nigeria is the way forward toward addressing the problem insecurity in our own country,” he said.
