State police inevitable -Lagos Speaker

The hope of State Police was on Thursday rekindle when the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon Mudashiru Obasa disclosed that the issue of State Police will be one of the top agenda as the Conference of Speakers in Nigeria begins their meeting today in Abuja.

Obasa made this disclosure while responding to questions at the 2nd edition of “Lagos Assembly, Media and Civil Society Organisation’s Parley held at the Lateef Jakande Auditorium at the Assembly complex. According to the Speaker, the issue of State Police is not yet close for calls in various quarters and is expected to be at the front burner of issues to be discussed at the conference.

Obasa said the primary purpose of any government is to ensure safety of lives and property of the citizenry, stressed that the ongoing calls for restructuring should not just be focussed on resource control and quest by regions to have access to power only, but that such calls should also be focussed on issues bordering on security of each state and region also. This move he said, could be easily achieved if each state/region was allowed to have its own state police.

He pointed out that the conference of Speakers would help him and his colleagues discuss issues relating to state police, among other burning national issues.

“There is no state in Nigeria that can claim to be totally safe, while one is not battling with kidnapping, another might be battling with insurgency. We are therefore trying to come up with an amendment that will help us scale through major discussions in Nigeria, including issues relating to restructuring in which the constitution of state police would be included,” the Speaker stated.

“Security of lives and property is the number one goal of any government. As calls for restructuring are coming from various groups, we must also be thinking about restructuring in the line of giving each state the opportunity to have and control their own police,” he added.

The Speaker gave the indication that the Lagos state legislature would leave no stone unturned in complementing the efforts of the executive arm of the state government in ridding the state of crime, especially through timely and people-oriented legislation.