Olalekan Adetayo
The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, on Thursday in Abuja accused state governments of not supporting efforts by the Federal Government to tackle security challenges across the country.
Mohammed spoke at the 2021 first quarterly meeting of Secretaries to State Governments of the 36 states and the FCT with the theme: ‘The role of Secretaries to the State Governments in strengthening sub-national level security architecture’.
He said the Federal Government had developed strategies to deal with some of the challenges and the support of state governments was necessary in order to achieve the desired results.
The police boss said, “At the federal level, we have developed a lot of strategies towards mitigating these issues but we don’t get the maximum cooperation that we supposed to get at the state level.
“We believe that secretaries to state governments should be conscious of security in their states because when they are able to galvanise all the stakeholders and different structures that are there that can enhance the security of their states, we will have relative peace in terms of insecurity.
“But if SSGs are not coordinating activities within the states, I don’t think anybody can do it.”
Representatives of the SSGs, however, disagreed with Adamu on his submission.
Rather, they accused the police of not responding on time to crime alert.
The Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, said there was need for the SSGs to start looking at structures that would work for the nation.
According to him, there is the need for the states to revisit the 1976 Dasuki Local Government reform, adding that it would be a good solution to the many security challenges and other problems in the states.
He said, “The Dasuki Reform is still the best for the LGAs and remain a good solution to the barrage of challenges we are all facing in our states.
“We will all agree that in the recent past, Nigeria has been confronted with an inexplicable escalation of violence resulting in insecurity across the nation.
“It not only serves as a drain to our national resources but creates a climate of uncertainty and challenges the ability of the Nation to provide a convivial atmosphere for its citizens to go about their everyday normal businesses.
“Governments at all levels have been doing their utmost to address these challenges. However, its persistence calls for approaches that are more than the conventional and normal to involve all arms of government, all apparatus of government and most importantly those that have relationship directly with the rural communities and the citizenry.”
The National Security Adviser, Maj-Gen. Babagana Monguno (retd), said state governments had to strategise on how their states could have a proper security sector in terms of training and funding among others.