From Molly Kilete, Abuja
As the National Assembly binned the bill for the establishment of state police in the ongoing constitution amendment, stakeholders have tasked the Federal Government to give priority to the funding of the Police Trust Fund (PTF).
The stakeholders, spread across academia, security experts, activists, legal and media practitioners, spoke against the backdrop of alleged plans by the Federal Government to scrap the PTF following a recent court judgment delivered in favour of the Rivers State government.
The state had challenged the constitutionality and validity of Section 4(1)(a) and Section 4(1)(b) of the Fund which permits the deduction of 0.5 per cent of the total revenue accruing to the federation account to be paid to the Fund.
On January 26, the court presided over by Justice Ahmed Mohammed, declared as “illegal, unlawful and unconstitutional,” such direct allocations made so far by the Federal Government from the federation account to fund the PTF.
He held that institutions or bodies, such as the PTF not listed in the Nigerian constitution cannot be funded directly from the federation account.
But the stakeholders, while lauding the trust fund as a well-conceived idea, argued that, notwithstanding, the court judgment which only stopped the use of monies belonging to states to fund the PTF, the Federal government should resist the temptations to scrap the agency as that would be tantamount to government cutting its nose to spite its face.
Professor of Law at the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola, Adamawa Sate, Mohammed Magaji, has admonished the Federal Government to work out another way of supporting the fund rather than scrapping it.
“The idea of the fund is a great and noble one, so it should not be jettisoned. Rather, a way of funding it should be worked out like the funding of TETFUND. There are many ways the National Assembly can devise to fund it such as getting corporations and companies to come in,” Magaji said.
A security expert and lawyer, Mathew Ogiri, who was among the police officers who articulated the idea of PTF during the tenure of Tafa Balogun as inspector general of police faulted any attempt to scrap the agency.
“The PTF is a good concept and scrapping it should not come up at all. But my worry is the fact that the whole thing has been politicised and the same people in government who opposed the fund from taking off are the same people who want it to come on board because they are now in power and that, to me, is being very selfish.”
Journalist and security consultant, Ben Okezie, argued it would be wrong to scrap the fund given its humongous assistance to the police.
“The court judgment did not call for its scrapping, it only said don’t take monies belonging to other tiers without their consent. What the Federal Government should do is to dialogue with states and also explore other sources of funding. But scrapping it would amount to a great disservice to Nigerians,” he said.
Haruna Mohammed Salisu, publisher, Wikki Times, also kicked against the abolition of the PTF.
“I don’t buy the idea of scrapping the PTF. The fund was established with good intentions to address some of the inadequacies faced by our colleagues to allow them function properly. We all know in this country that one of the reasons our security architecture is not functioning properly is because they are not given the right resources, the right training, and right remuneration to work effectively.
“So, when you scrap the fund, a lot of things will likely unfold which would not augur well for the nation’s security architecture,” Salisu said.
A lawyer, Chukwudi Awani, said scrapping it would deal a heavy blow on the police.
“I can tell you for free that the force will remain ill-equipped; it will not have equipment, it can’t buy arms, vehicles, fuel vehicles. There must be a meeting of minds on how resources would be deployed to the fund.”
Mohammed Hassan, security consultant said: “I don’t want them to scrap it because the police are getting additional logistics from the PTF through their partnership with the public.
“The danger of scrapping it is that the additional support it lends to the police will not be there.”
A civil society activist, Emmanuel Onwubiko, is of the opinion that the PTF is helpful, but needs to be properly institutionalised.
“The legal framework that set it up is illegal. It’s difficult to scrap something that has already been set up, the only thing they can do about it is to amend the laws. They should take the law back to the National Assembly for a comprehensive amendment.”
Goodluck Ibem, who is also an activist, suggested the fund be boosted through contributions by all Nigerians so that the police is better equipped to combat the rising insecurity in the country.
He suggested the deployment of proceeds from the Internally Generated Revenue such as from taxes, excise duties, oil revenues, and other solid mineral proceeds to fund the PTF.