State, Community Policing solution to Insecurity – Rep

Victor Oluwasegun, Abuja

State and Community policing is the solution to the various levels of insecurity plaguing the country, a lawmaker, Rep Dachung Bagos representing Jos south/Jos east federal constituency of Plateau state, has said.

Bagos, who spoke at a media parley with House of Representatives Correspondents at the weekend said that most lawmakers in the House of Representatives are desirous of State and Community policing, but that its been difficult to get the executive to do the right thing.

“The legislature as the representatives of the people, on a daily basis we have issues of kidnapping, one attack or the other in our various constituencies, and when we come up with legislations or some pieces of law to guide the Executive, it usually becomes a problem.

” And I know that the legislatures (States) are very interested in having state and community policing, and the executive {Federal) is looking at it the other way round. Until recently when it started thinking of state and community policing. But that is one of the major crossroads.

“We know that the constitution states that one of the responsibilities of the state is to ensure that people are safe, and that the lives and properties of of Nigerians is the responsibility of the state, if its the responsibility of the state, why domicile the issue only to the Federal Government? ”

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Bagos said the desire of most legislators is that they resolve the issue: He said: “Our desire is that we should have state police, and a lot of lawmakers agree with me. If we have State and Community Policing, it will give confidence to the system. Not only confidence, the socio–economic development that were crying for. Business men will have confidence to come and invest.”

The lawmaker said when the issue of insecurity arises, the state security apparatus does not need to wait to get a call from the Inspect General of Police, IGP to act.

According to him, confidence has to be re-injected into the country as regards the issue of insecurity.

He said: “The executive are doing their own, but we want the legislature to do their own to see that insecurity is a thing of the past, especially when it comes to constitutional issues and law.

Bagos said this will ensure that the constituencies have Community Policing and have the backing of the law, ” with freedom from the Executive. “