By Citizenship Daily
The 36 states of the federation have all submitted their reports on the establishment of State Police to the National Economic Council (NEC).
The completion of submission of the report followed the deadline issued to the defaulting states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to unfailingly make theirs available before yesterday’s NEC meeting.
However, the FCT has yet to comply with the directive of NEC as it failed to make its report available at Thursday’s meeting.
Consequently, deliberations of the reports were stepped down till next NEC meeting which is likely to hold in January 2025.
Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani disclosed this on Thursday while briefing newsmen on the outcome of the monthly Council meeting presided over by Vice President Kashim Shettima.
Governor Sani said from the glimpse of the reports, virtually all the states have indicated their support for the creation of State Police.
He said: “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. But today, the council decided to step down the discussion until the next council meeting, because we need to come up with a report from the secretariat. And after the report, there will be deliberation at the next NEC meeting that is likely taking place in January.
“And not only that, there’s also a resolution in the last NEC meeting, which today the secretariat has also agreed on that there will be further stakeholder engagement after the panel and deliberation by the members of the NEC.
“So all we are saying here is that 36 states have made their own submission, and many states are in agreement for the establishment of state police, 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 government space, that is the reason why most of us agreed that establishment of state police in Nigeria is the way forward toward addressing the problem of insecurity in our own country.”
