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Olakunle Olafioye
An elder statesman and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Lanre Razak has said that the establishment of state police is the only panacea to the country’s current security challenges.
Razak made the assertion in Lagos at a media interaction where he insisted that the only way to effectively tackle the security problem in Nigeria is through community policing to be handled by state police under the supervision of the state governors.
The concerned former Public Transportation Commissioner in Lagos frowned at a system whereby the state governors would be addressed as the Chief Security Officers of their respective states and yet lack power over the personnel, saying, “the deceit should stop.”
According to him, the challenges affect everybody in the country irrespective of religious or ethnic affiliations, stressing the need for separate arrangements across the country to float outfits that would handle their peculiar security challenges.
He therefore tasked the initiators of the South-west regional security outfit code-named Amotekun to ensure its workability, saying, its establishment was long overdue for security of lives and property in the zone.
While tasking them to do everything possible within the law to ensure its workability because of its importance to the security of the citizenry, Razak regretted that the security situations in the country calls for more hands on deck to complement the federal government’s efforts at curbing the menace, asserting that, Amotekun is not out to usurp the duties of the regular security agencies in the country.
According to him, since bandits and criminals are not spirits but humans living within the community, it would be easier for the local outfit to identify them and their hideouts and would be able to fish them out and hand them over to the regular security agencies for appropriate actions.
While thanking the Federal government under the able leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, for appreciating the need for community policing, he urged the Federal government to show more understanding towards the actual motive of the Amotekun protagonists as an added advantage for curbing crimes in the country.
