By UGONNIA PAT ANYADUBALU

State Police: Part 1, item 45 of Exclusive Legislative List

Part 1, item 45 of the Exclusive legislative list makes the police exclusively under the control of the Federal Government. Recently, there is a renewed agitation that states should be empowered to establish their own police.

I do not support creation of State Police, the situation is not yet ripe for establishment of State of Police. It is also interesting that most states that survive on monthly handout from the Federal Government, are calling for increased expenditure through establishment of State Police.

The country is still polarized based on ethnic sentiments. It is in this country that a State sacked all the civil servants who have been working in the State because they are not from the state. It is in this country that a judge was denied elevation to higher bench just because he is not from the State. We are all guilty of ethnic jingoism therefore a State Police will no doubt operate in that line of ethnic sentimentalism and emotionalism with it attendant hostilities to the non indigenes .

As an Igbo, I will not support a State Police because we are the most peripathetic and gregarious ethnic group in Nigeria therefore a State Police will be akin to release of Alsatian dog to your us. We shall be at receiving end of the excesses of state police.

Our politicians will also use State Police against their perceived political opponents even intimidate the electorate during voting.

Another reason, I am against the State Police is because it will engender disintegration of the country since States will now have their Police and equip them with arms. The Federal Government cannot regulate the amount and nature of arms that will be among the people.

This will also lead to proliferation of arms and increase in violent crimes rather than check crime. Today, arms are easily smuggled into the country; you can then imagine when more arms are in the hands of more people through State Police. The existing para-military bodies is pointer to what the State Police will look like.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM

The country should deliberate whether it intends to retain the local Government system or not. This is because, the Governors have literally destroyed the local Government system by their refusal to organize a local Government election and refusal to release the funds due to the local Government Areas.

If we indeed intend to run an independent local Government system then we should release the local Government system from the strangle hold of the Governors. To do so we then need to amend the following provisions of 1999 constitution.