Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, has urged the Federal Government to reconsider the establishment of state police as a crucial step to address the prevailing security challenges across the country.
Speaking during a meeting with the Conference of Speakers of State Legislators, South-West Chapter, the Governor emphasized that the idea of state police is timely and imperative.
Governor Makinde pointed out that the refusal of the Federal Government to approve the South-West Governors’ request for state police a few years ago prompted the establishment of the Western Nigeria Security Network Agency, known as Amotekun.
The governor said, “I want to observe that you need to all come together irrespective of the political party that brought you into office. This is a demonstration that the electioneering period is over and you need to have everybody pulling together to govern and deliver dividends of democracy to our people.”
As reported by RoyalTimes, the Governor expressed his belief that states are well-equipped to maintain their police forces and dismissed concerns about their financial capacity. He cited Oyo State’s ability to consistently meet salary and pension obligations despite economic challenges as an example.
“A lot of people may not know that before we launched Amotekun in this state, some of us governors went to the Federal Government and asked to be allowed to set up state police for our various states but we did not get that approval during the time of President Muhammadu Buhari.”
“I disagreed at that particular time and still disagree to date that the states are not in the position to maintain state police. I have never seen where the Federal Government went to a particular state and gave the police everything they needed. So, the states are already maintaining the police.”
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