BY OLA AJAYI,

IBADAN — Former Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State who was a retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, has advised that community policing should be considered instead of state police that is being agitated for.

According to him, the bad effects of state police on governance would far outweigh its advantages.
Akala, who was speaking as a guest lecturer at a  monthly public lecture organized by the Ibadan Zonal Station of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, Ibadan, said many politicians would use it to oppress, harass and intimidate their opponents.

Speaking on the topic entitled;  ‘Governance and National Security Challenges: The Way Out’, he itemised  various security challenges facing the country which included acts of sabotage against the nation’s economy, ethnicity/communal conflicts and boundary disputes, proliferation of arms, corruption, Niger-Delta insurgence and militia groups and unemployment.
Akala said: “I wish to state with all sense of responsibility that we as a nation, are not ripe for each state to have its own police force”.

He counseled that the police should be given adequate equipment to perform, and “they would perform.”