By Simon Ebegbulem
BENIN—FORMER Chief Whip of the Senate, Senator Rowland Owie has appealed to President Goodluck Jonathan not to be “stampeded” into merging the Nigeria Police and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, NSCDC, as being canvassed in some quarters.

He recalled that the earlier discipline, which the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, exhibited when it was first established and headed by Prof. Wole Soyinka, diminished after the Commission was merged with the police, warning that a similar fate may befall the NSCDC, which came into being after the Bill which he sponsored at the Senate was passed and assented to by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Senator Owie spoke while commissioning a mosque and church, which was constructed by the Edo State Command of the NSCDC.

Commandant Abel Bello, reacting to the recent committee set up by the presidency to look at the possibility of merging the two bodies following the call in some quarters to merge the two organizations.

But faulting the call, Senator who commended the entire members of the National Assembly 1999_2003 and former President Olusegun Obasanjo for ensuring that NSCDC was established, asserted that “before this thing went through it started in 2000 and the battle was serious. Even when it passed through the National Assembly to the President for his assent, they moved to stop it.

“Now they have started again to call for merger with the police. That was how some Nigerians who does not mean well stampeded Obasanjo to merge the Federal Road Safety Commission with the police. All of us can testify that when Prof.Wole Soyinka headed the Road Safety Commission, it was disciplined.

But the short time they merged them with the police, by the time they were separated, FRSC changed. They are still fighting today to bring back the discipline of the Road Safety Commission which Wole Soyinka instilled when he was there.

“That short marriage between them and police spoilt a lot. The law is clear on this. I am appealing to President Goodluck Jonathan, he should not allow the same people that stampeded Obasanjo to merge Federal Road Safety Commission with the police, to stampede him again into doing things that are not right.

NSCDC has come to stay, the laws are very clear, there is no over lapping, the police should face their job and NSCDC face their job. I am also calling on the leadership of the National Assembly not to allow that to happen” he stated.