Former presidential candidate, Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has called on President Bola Tinubu and the National Assembly leadership to implement the party’s policy on decentralisation of policing to halt killings and kidnappings across the country.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain said this at the weekend in Ilorin, Kwara State, on the heels of the abduction and killing, last Thursday, of Olu Koro in Ekiti Local Council of the State, HRH Oba Olusegun Aremu, a retired General.

On January 29, gunmen had also killed two Ekiti monarchs – the Onimojo of Imojo, Oba Olatunde Olusola, and the Elesun of Esun Ekiti, Oba Babatunde Ogunsakin.

Also in the same area, the assailants attacked a school bus and whisked away five pupils of Apostolic Faith Group of Schools, three teachers, and the bus driver.

Olawepo-Hashim described the killing as condemnable and represented another sordid episode in the unending killings of community leaders and their subjects by terrorists.

He said: “I really do not understand the hesitation on the part of the President and the party leadership to lead the charge. Many state governments and local councils are being controlled by APC. The party also controls the National Assembly and majority of Houses of Assembly. So, it means the party can obtain the legislative consensus within one week to bring to birth state policing.”

For some time now, there has been a clamour for the establishment of state police as opposed to what was laid down in Section 214 of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution. This is as a result of the deteriorating situation of the security system in the country. Some other reasons for this clamour are that the country’s geographical area is too large for a central police command; and policing citizens should be the responsibility of the respective states and not that of the Federal Government.

He argued that while immediate creation of local police would not stop all the insecurity in Nigeria, it would solve about half of it, adding: “We cannot let the bloodletting continue and carry on as if we are confused on what is to be done to stop it.”