Follow Us on Google
By Lawrence Agbo
The National Chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, has criticised the push by President Bola Tinubu’s administration to establish state police, arguing that the Federal Government should instead focus on strengthening existing security institutions.
Speaking during an interview on Politics Today, Baba-Ahmed questioned the timing of the proposed reform, insisting that introducing state police now would not address Nigeria’s worsening insecurity.
He noted that the debate over state police predates the Tinubu administration and argued that if it were truly the most urgent solution, the government would have prioritised it much earlier.
“The best time is not now. In fact, this is the worst possible time,” Baba-Ahmed said.
He maintained that the President still has several options within the existing security framework to tackle insecurity without creating new police structures.
According to him, the Federal Government should improve the effectiveness of the Nigeria Police Force and the military, rather than transferring policing responsibilities to state governments.
Other News
“There are still 101 things President Tinubu can do with what he has on the ground to improve our security, to bring an end to all this stealing of human beings and killing of human beings,” he said.
Baba-Ahmed argued that the military and the police could perform better with the right reforms and leadership, stressing that creating state police without fixing the federal security architecture could worsen the situation.
“He’s creating policemen and giving them to states. Then he thinks that is the solution to the problem,” he said.
The PRP chairman also questioned what he described as the Federal Government’s failure to improve the performance of the existing federal police before pursuing a decentralised policing system.
“You have a federal police that has failed to do any work. So what you’re doing is saying, governors, create your own police. Go and do what you want to do with them. You are compounding the problem that we have,” Baba-Ahmed added.
He also challenged supporters of the state police bill to provide evidence that the proposed legislation contains adequate safeguards against abuse, warning that introducing the system without addressing existing structural deficiencies could create new governance and security challenges.
