A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mohammed Ndarani Mohammed, has thrown his weight behind the formation of state police across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT.

This was part of the memorandum submitted to the Deputy Speaker and Honourable Chairman, House Committee on Constitution Review, cited by our reporter.

Ndarani, SAN, said that the formation of state police in all the states of the Federation is long overdue.

According to his argument, with the rising spate of insecurity and the gradual involvement of the communities and local vigilantes in collaborative efforts between the regular police and members of the public to protect lives and property, there is no doubt that the neighbourhood would be safer, crime reduced, and offenders easily fished out.

“Out of the over twenty-five (25) Federating nations in the world today, including the United States of America, India, Indonesia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, etc., and others like Great Britain and Italy, which practice multilevel policing systems, Nigeria is the only country without a State Police, Ndarani said in his submission to the House of Representatives Committee on Constitutional Review.

He said: “Our submission on the State Police is to strengthen our proposal for a parliamentary system of government since the State Police is an essential aspect of a strong federation, which we seek to achieve through our submissions.

“To foster cooperation between the federal and state police, we recommend that the Constitution and other relevant laws in this respect by the National Assembly should specify and clearly define the responsibility of the federal and state police formations and give a clear-cut demarcation between their spheres of operation.

On how to check the excesses of politicians who would use the police at their disposal to hunt down and terrorise their political opponents and to quell opposition and wantonly violate the rights of the citizens, Ndarani, SAN, suggested that a provision be made in the Federal Law that will permit the National Assembly in such situations to proscribe such state police formation and prosecute the officers so indicted.

An excerpt is the abstract of the State Police Formation from the Memorandum on the Review of the 1999 Constitution submitted to the House of Representatives.

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