The pan-Yoruba socio-political organisation, Afenifere, on Friday, lauded President Bola Tinubu for his resolve to have state police established in the country.

In a statement by Afenifere’s National Publicity Secretary, Jare Ajayi, the organisation asserted that Nigeria is long overdue to have state police.

“We are aware that President Bola Tinubu is committed to having state police take-off as soon as possible, going by his pronouncements and the steps his government has taken on this issue,” Ajayi stated.

He added that President Tinubu’s recent remarks on the issue in Makurdi and Abuja “further demonstrated his determination to have the project (state police) take off as soon as possible.”

It would be recalled that the President spoke during his visit to Benue State in the wake of the killing of over 200 people and burning of several houses in Yelwata, Guma Local Government Area of the state by bandits.

The President who reaffirmed his earlier promise “to protect democracy, freedom and prosperity,” further declared that “we were elected to govern, not to bury people,” in reference to the dastard act of decimating human lives in the most barbaric manner as witnessed in Benue, Plateau, Nassarawa, and so on.

Afenifere further lauded the President for reminding everyone that “The value of human life is greater than that of a cow.”

The organisation observed that the Makurdi declaration by the President was a reiteration of what he had said the day before (on Tuesday) in Abuja at the Constitution Review Legislative Dialogue on National Security, organised by the House of Representatives and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

The President, who described the 1999 Constitution as foundational to the country’s democracy, was, however, emphatic that the document is outdated in dealing with “modern security threats.”

He had, through the Minister of Defence, Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar Badaru, maintained that “The debate over state police is no longer theoretical. It is grounded in the daily fears and lived anxieties of Nigerians – Farmers afraid to tend their fields, traders unsure of safe passage and communities abandoned to self-help.”

Afenifere expressed the hope that state police would be established forthwith, “now that the majority of the state governors and the Houses of Assembly in the country have keyed into it.”

It would be recalled that the Chairman of the Conference of Speakers, the Right Honourable Debo Ogundoyin, stated that the Houses of Assembly in Nigeria were ready to support constitutional amendments to enable the establishment of state police. He urged lawmakers in the National Assembly to “prioritise constitutional reforms to reshape Nigeria’s security framework for the benefit of present and future generations.”

Ogundoyin, who is the Oyo State House of Assembly Speaker, described the establishment of state police now as “a patriotic and strategic necessity.”

In the words of the President at the Abuja dialogue: “The pace of change in technology, in the complexity of security threats and in the dynamics of our federal structure has far outstripped the capacity of some constitutional provisions”.

To underscore the necessity of the desired constitutional change, the President declared that “Our Constitution must evolve or risk becoming a danger to the very unity it was meant to protect.”

Going into the memory lane, Ajayi stated that the country’s policing system was centralised with the establishment of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) in 1960. Ever since, the force has been under the exclusive control of the federal government. However, agitations have been ongoing for decades to remove the police from the Exclusive Legislative List.

There was the M. D. Yusuf-led Presidential Committee on Police Reform in 2006. There was another one headed by Mr. Parry Osayande in 2012. The two committees recommended decentralising the police. However, various governments, including those that established the committees, had not deemed it necessary to implement the recommendations.

In 2021, the governors of the 17 states in Southern Nigeria unanimously called for the creation of state police. They made their position known during their meetings first in Asaba and later in Lagos and Enugu.

State Governors, at a recent meeting of the Council of States, have also seen the need for the establishment of state police.

“In view of the concurrency of opinions on the need to have state police now among the national and state legislators as well as the Executive Arm of Government, it is hoped that state police will take off very soon in Nigeria,” the Afenifere spokesman concluded.