Senator Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, Governor of Bauchi State has made case for national dialogue, resource re-distribution, State policing among others as an enduring panacea to insecurity in Nigeria.
The Governor made the push in his speech on Monday at the 2021 annual conference of Nigeria Bar Association (NHA) held in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Governor Bala Mohammed insisted that that dialogue is away to go if insecurity must be properly tamed,
“We must talk! There are those who believe that we have talked enough. I disagree. Rather than hurling stones at ourselves in the marketplace, let us hurl verbal scuds at each other in secluded avenues where, after the brickbats, we can hug each other,
” The tension is too high, anger is boiling over; to refuse to talk implies that we are ready to go our separate ways. I, Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed, believe in the promise of a great Nigeria.
” Let us not deceive ourselves: yes, we have had a lot of internal squabbles, disagreements and inter-ethnic skirmishes;
” yet, it is an incontrovertible fact that the Nigerian nation that is now 60 years old, has been intertwined, interwoven and intermingled by a long needle and thread of social interrelationships that will appear unbreakable and moulded into a common destiny”, he said.
According to him, time is ripe to embrace State policing if the security challenges confronting the country must be brought under the feet,
” The National Assembly should waste no further time in amending the constitution to allow for the creation of state police.
This recommendation will strengthen our federalism, boost the authority and ability of state governors to tackle security challenges before they snowball to cataclysmic proportions.
” In advocating state police formations, cognizance has been taken of the fact that the state and local government authorities are closer to majority of Nigerians who invariably live in the rural areas,
“Besides, as the saying goes, like politics, all crime is local. Only the state governments can effectively co-opt the traditional rulers into the security architecture for effective intelligence gathering and community engagements”, he said.
Bala Mohammed further maintained that re-distribution of national resources plays a key role as a viable variable that can take the country out of insecurity.
“Pending the much envisaged Constitutional Amendment, suffice it to say that creation of state police will entail an adjustment of the revenue allocation formula to energise the States, the freed resources should be reallocated to where they are needed for guaranteed security and that is at the state and local government levels. Let us have the political will to do the needful”.
The Bauchi State Governor also made case for Federal character in security, sustained youth empowerment, good governance and quality leadership as worthy factors to consider in order to win the war against insecurity.
