Human rights writers association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has lamented that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is really not interested in achieving a holistic and sustainable reforms of the near moribund Nigeria Police Force.

The rights group said the so-called community policing introduced by the current administration is a mere smokescreen to stop the much needed constitutional reforms that would lead to formation of functional state and local policing architectures for effective and efficient policing of the country.

HURIWA also expressed disappointment that the Federal Government has quickly thrown up N13 billion into the hurriedly choreographed community policing that lacks any legislative or legal frameworks.

It described the Community Policing as a project set on quicksand and exposed as an experiment in futility actually set up as a cash guzzling venture to benefit some few persons with connections to the corridors of power.

“There will inevitably not be any constructive and long lasting impacts in stamping out the expanding frontiers of sophisticated crimes of armed banditry, mass killings by armed Fulani herdsmen and terrorism by a motley collection of armed none state actors who are currently holding the country on its jocular,” HURIWA said.

In a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, and the National Media Affairs Director, Miss Zainab Yusuf, the rights advocacy group asked Nigerians to demand accountability from President Buhari why his administration is announcing a N13 billion take-off of the community policing project about the same time that the Miyetti Allah Cattle Owners Association has announced the formation of a quasi-national policing outfits all across the country which offends in its entirety the constitutional provisions that prohibits the setting up of a parallel national policing institution.

Notwithstanding, it said, President Buhari has maintained conspiratorial silence in the face of this national provocation which has inevitably unleashed a national outrage from a cross section of the Nigerian society.

“HURIWA has on many occasions suggested the idea of rewriting certain provisions of the Constitution to divest the command and control structures of the Police away from the President to enable the federating units to establish their properly trained and armed policing institutions to protect and safeguard their immediate surrounding.”

The federating units, it said, will liaise actively with a loose federal policing structure that will remain under the Command and Control of the Federal Government just like how the policing institutions work harmoniously in other civilised societies like the United States from where Nigeria borrowed the Presidential system of government.

“We are aware that the 8th National Assembly passed the necessary amendments to bring into being the creation of State Police but President Buhari reportedly refused to ratify these amendments but now we are regaled with the drama of setting up what the Federal Government calls community police which lacks legal anchor and is at best an adventure in money wasting enterprise which will not achieve much in terms of the demand by Nigerians for an effective law enforcement architecture to be set up in the Nigeria states to arrest the imminent collapse of law and order which have started manifesting in the North East and North West with constant violent attacks by Islamic terrorists and the violence unleashed by armed Fulani herdsmen and armed bandits that have resulted in thousands of casualties.

“The fact that emphasis is already on the N13 billion released for this gambit of community police shows where the heart and mind of the formators is and that is exactly on how to share the money. As we were told that much of the N13 billion just approved by President Buhari for the take-off of community policing in the country will go into training, sensitisation and purchase of equipment, the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, said on Friday.

“And then to show Nigerians the organised confusion that the community police is, the IGP reportedly warned vigilance and neighborhood watch groups against using the community policing programme to get involved in illegal possession of arms.

“This government at the centre and a lot of other state governments are not really committed to the critical issue of defending their homelands and their people.

“The community police project is a huge joke because if the Nigeria Police Force as currently constituted in which hundreds of billions of naira have been invested into has turned out as the most ineffective policing institution in the entire World, how do you expect a mere drop in the ocean which is what N13 billion represents to change the status quo when the legal frameworks are not fundamentally tinkered with?

“This is simply an insane joke which will further expose Nigeria to international odium.”

HURIWA has also backed the call by the Benue State Governor to democratise ownership of weapons for self defence, adding that the right to life is the only right that has no remedy if taken away.

It therefore asked the National Assembly and state assemblies to legalize ownership of guns by sane minds.

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