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HomeNewsHow Nigeria can tackle insecurity – Oyetola

How Nigeria can tackle insecurity – Oyetola

Governor Gboyega Oyetola of Osun State has said the centralized policing system is not working in Nigeria.

Mr. Oyetola said to meet the current security challenges in the land, the federal government needs to decentralize the policing system.

He made this point known on Wednesday while speaking at the 2nd Annual Colloquium of the Sultan Maccido Institute for Peace, Leadership and Development Studies, University of Abuja.

Mr Oyetola identified the sources of insecurity as “poverty which creates a gulf between the rich and the poor; inequitable allocation of resources which pits one region against the other; and injustice which makes offended parties resort to self-help and consequently take up arms against the state.”

The governor also identified “illiteracy which makes innocent citizens willing tools at the hands of unscrupulous elites and elements; youth unemployment which makes able-bodied; and educated youths susceptible to crime, among others.”

He stressed that the inability of the central police to tackle insecurity effectively led to the creation of Amotekun, a local security network in the South-west region.

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The nation’s conventional security agencies are overstretched and sorely underfunded. The Police once confirmed the sorry state of its manpower when it said the Force needed 155,000 additional hands to effectively police the nation. The nation’s security agencies as presently constituted are too centralized and too far from the grassroots to adequately provide the required security for the nation.

Worse still, they are unfamiliar with the terrains where crimes take place. It is our belief that our people understand the topography of their communities more and can govern them better.

The nation’s expansive forests have unfortunately become the hideouts of bandits, kidnappers, and other criminals. With the establishment of Amotekun, the forests of the South West are now better policed. The issues that make Amotekun inevitable in the South West are the same in other regions of the nation. Other regions may wish to emulate the South West to put structures in place to rid their regions of crime.

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