President Bola Tinubu.
By Dianabasi Effiong
The Tinubu Media Support Group (TMSG) has described the outcome of the recent joint meeting of the Northern States Governors’ Forum and the Northern Traditional Rulers’ Council as the necessary national consensus to end insecurity in Nigeria.
This comes a few days after their Southern Nigerian counterparts adopted President Bola Tinubu’s position on the need for the National Assembly to speed up the process of creating state Police.
In a statement signed by its Chairman Emeka Nwankpa and Secretary Dapo Okubanjo, TMSG stated that the stage appeared set for a seamless passage of the bill for the creation of state police.
It said: “When President Bola Tinubu ramped up his advocacy for state police in a recent national address during which he unveiled some security measures, it was clear that a consensus was necessary amongst political office holders across the country.
”So we are elated that shortly after Southern leaders comprising governors of states in Southern Nigeria and traditional rulers endorsed the President’s position, their counterparts from the North have opted to follow suit.
”The communique issued at the end of the meeting was emphatic in the declaration of a ‘wholesale support and commitment to the establishment of State Police’. The governor of the 19 states in Northern Nigeria also sent an unequivocal message to national and state assemblies in the region to ‘expedite action for its actualisation.
”This, for us, is a major positive development, especially as governors from the North had, a few years ago, maintained that the region was not ready for state policing.
”We recall that after an initial agreement with their counterparts from Southern Nigeria in June 2012, the governors of Northern Nigeria backtracked one month later. They not only rejected state police but also ‘resolved to prevail on the Federal Government to embark on police reforms that will assist states to control and manage police affairs.’
”It is against this backdrop that we view the endorsement of the President’s position by the current political leadership as a major forward movement that has now set the tone for the bill to easily scale through at the National Assembly and state houses of assembly where it will require the endorsement of 24 out of the 36 assemblies.”
The group further stressed its conviction that a decentralised policing system will ensure that all ungoverned spaces across the country are identified and well-covered to deny access to marauding criminals and non-state actors.
