Nigeria Will Be In Trouble It Cannot Get Out Of If State Police Is Established – Yakassai

Tanko Yakassai, a founding member of the Arewa Consultative Forum, has spoken against the establishment of state police.

Many Nigerians have been clamouring for restructuring including state police establishment.

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The south west region established the Amotekun outfit to address insecurity in the region.

Daily Times gathered that Yakassai in an interview said the police force membership should be tripled instead of regional police outfits.

He said: Let me tell you, as long as the government does not address the issue of unemployment and empower the youths, we can continue to shout at the top of our voices but the problems of banditry and kidnapping will continue. The quickest way to solve the problem is to empower people. If people can work and get money, they are not going to steal. Stealing itself is not even an easy job. It is a very risky business. You are afraid that you will be arrested and so on, but there is nothing you can do. People tend to go to the greater evil, which is stealing. The only way is for Nigeria to empower the people and that will solve the problems of banditry and insecurity.

I said my views about Amotekun already. The people from the South-East are yearning for their own version of Amotekun; the South-South will follow. Then the North-East and the rest will also pick it up. There is no way an APC governor will employ PDP members into his state security outfit. And there is no way a PDP governor will equally employ APC supporters into his state security architecture. And the man who leads such an organisation will himself be a card-carrying member of the ruling party in the state.

I had suffered from local government policemen. At that time, the local policemen in Kano were about 80 per cent of the security in Kano. So, I am not for it. At 94, I know I am on my way going. But any day Nigeria makes that mistake of having state police, we will be in for a trouble that we cannot get out of.