Insecurity: Gov Yari mulls state police

…Says fears of Govs overbearing influence not tenable
In the face of rising insecurity, Zamfara State Governor and Chairman, Nigerian Governor’s Forum, Abdulaziz Yari, on Tuesday, backed agitations for the creation of state police, saying the country is now mature for such system.

The development, Yari said, will effectively tackle the internal security problems facing the country.

Yari stated this in Gusau, Zamfara State capital while fielding questions from visiting team of journalists on a democracy dividends tour led by Abdulwaheed Odusile, National President, Nigerian Union of Journalist (NUJ).

According to the governor, if the argument is that state governors are going to use the state police to their advantage, ‘‘what assurance is there that the federal government is not using the federal police against the opposition’’.

In this vein, the Governor emphasised that “I think we are matured for state police because in 2014 when we are doing constitution amendments, we came up with the issue of state police. Many Nigerians did not support the then issue because of the nature of some state executives.

“Our problem today, is not one to engage the military, it is internal security and the police are the right people to provide the intelligence.

“They are the right people to work in the situation but because the police are either not trained very well to cater for the menace or they are inadequate, their number not enough to match with the problem, or they are not equipped. But we are concerned with the number of Nigeria police.

“I don’t think Nigeria police is up to 500,000 in the nation of over 200 million people. So they are very inadequate to cater for the problem. If we are giving opportunity to have state police it will be nice.

“By the way, it is only salary that we are not paying because we pay allowance for any officer that slept overnight on duty outside the post. We pay him. They are on our payrolls. It is is only arms and ammunition we are not buying for them, but all the logistics and other expectations are on the shoulder of state governments. If we can do that we can take the other responsibilities”, he said.

Besides, he stressed the need for collaboration between the Federal Government and the legislature with a view to finding a permanent plan for funding capital development, and infrastructure projects, adding that Nigeria cannot attain her infrastructural development goal using the current budgeting system.

Yari recalled that his experience as a former lawmaker has shown that Nigeria’s budgeting system cannot effectively fund the country’s critical infrastructure.

Every Senator and member, House of Representatives want a particular project to be cited in his or her community, stressing that the country’s infrastructure is beyond constituency projects.

Commenting on the performance of his administration, Yari said his study of people of the state and what they need before coming into governance defined the projects being done in various parts of the state.

He said plans are underway to build embedded electricity generation for rural communities.

Earlier, the state Commissioner for Health, Alhaji Lawal Liman, recalled that the state was recognised by the Federal Ministry of Health for being the first in the county to intiate saving one million lives programme.

Our correspondent observed that the state made a lot of investments in the healthcare delivery services culminating in provisions of necessary equipment, renovations and reconstructions of health facilities.

Liman said in all, the state has fully renovated and equipped 147 primary health centres distributed in every ward in the state.

“In 2017, we recruited 49 midwives, just recently we recruited 100 doctors and 324 nurses and midwives to add the ones in the state already.

Also we have achieved full accreditation of our school of nursing and midwives, and just last week, we received another accreditation of our College of Health and Science Technology. Out of the six, five were given full accreditation” he added.

For his part, Alhaji Murtala Adamu Jingebe, the state SUBEB Chairman, said the state undertook the overhauling of education system with a view to improving to internationally acceptable level.

To this end, Jingebe said over N15 billion has been spent in building schools and providing other educational facilities in the state.

‘‘We have spent about N15 billion from 2011 till date building schools. We have over four thousand classrooms built. We have renovated over 500 schools.

“We are not saying that we do not have bad schools, and we have schools that are really bad. But we have done a lot in trying to change the look of our schools.

” We have built 52 ICT Centres and equip them with computers. We selected teachers for the ICT Centres, we trained them for one month and send them to schools. In one of the villages that you went today, you would have seen how kids in primary schools can play with computers in those schools that really have the ICT Centres” he added.