El-Rufai says only the National Assembly could make state police a reality.
As part of efforts to address insecurity in Nigeria, Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has called on federal government to devolve power by granting governors resource control, state police and a decentralised judiciary.
He said that is why the Federal Government’s power is being challenged in a “frighteningly sustained manner.”
El-Rufai said, “I would recommend the following immediate decisions and actions by the federal and state governments, with the support of our civil society and all well-meaning Nigerians. The first is to implement the three key devolution proposals that I mentioned: Give us state police now; vest all minerals in the states now; and decentralise our judiciary now — not later.
“There are certain things governors cannot do. Some of them we have alluded to by saying we don’t control security agencies. So, you are chief security officer, but you can call the CP (commissioner of police) and if the IG (Inspector General) says, ‘Don’t talk to him,’ that is it.
“In five and a half years, as governor of Kaduna State, I have had eight commissioners of police. They are just posted; they spend seven or eight months (each) on average. Do the mathematics. Eight CPs that have virtually no say in their posting, and so on. How can you have security management if you change the frontline chief of security every eight months on average?”
El-Rufai said this during a live broadcast tagged ‘The Fierce Urgency of Now: Tactics and Strategies to Pull Nigeria from the Brink,’ on Friday, February 19, 2021.
The governor said Nigeria has failed “jealously and consistently protect its prerogatives and status as a leviathan, the ultimate guarantor of security, the protector of rights and the promoter of the rule of law.”
