Senator Gabriel Suswam (PDP, Benue East) said state police is a recipe for the complete disintegration of the country as governors will stockpile arms and appoint their relatives as commissioners, DPOs.
The lawmaker who was Governor of Benue from 2007 to 2015, said said even though he was a member of the constitution amendment committee of the Senate, he had made it clear that he was vehemently opposed to it.
In an interview with 21st CENTURY CHRONICLE, Suswam said even within the constitution amendment committee, another committee had to be set up to fine tune how it will be captured such that it will be acceptable to everyone, since those for and against the idea all took very strong positions and it was difficult for the committee to come up with a position.
He said his opposition to the idea of state police was on the premise that Nigeria’s leaders do not have the maturity to control it.
“Even as a sitting governor, I opposed it because I know that most of us do not have the maturity to control state police. The proposal in the constitution amendment is that governors will appoint commissioners of police. I will not be a party to that. I know the implications of that; that will be a recipe for the completed disintegration of the country except we want that.
“As governor, if I have state police, there is no way you will come into that state and misbehave that I won’t charge you for nuisance and put you in jail and when it comes to election, you know that I will appoint the commissioner of police, my mother can be commissioner of police, my cousins will be the DPOs here and there and my lackeys will hold other positions such that anywhere somebody is my opponent politically, that person is gone,” he said.
Suswam said those comparing Nigeria with other countries on the issue were getting it wrong because the situation of Nigeria and those countries is not the same just as they have long developed past where Nigeria is as a country.
“We should wait till we are matured enough then we can get state police. I’ll give you an example of the local government electoral commissions. As a sitting governor, there was no way any other party was going to win even a councillorship position in my state. What would be the difference between that and state police? “Except we are inviting anarchy, state police is not something people should be talking about now, the consequence will be worse than what we are trying to solve.
“I conducted local government election and no party won any position so if I have state police and commissioner of police, how will my party ever lose and election? Some of these things people talk about are out of ignorance, some out of mischief, some out of desperation but we need to sit down and think of what we need to do to solve the problem of insecurity.”
Continuing, the former governor said, “When you have state police and we have the allowance to buy arms, Nasarawa governor will be buying arms, all governors will be buying arms in the name of state police. Do you know what that means? We are recruiting state police so my political boys will be in the police.
“State police is not an area to go, let us not even think about it. As a sitting governor, I vehemently opposed it and even now anywhere it is raised, I oppose and when they raised it in the constitutional amendment committee where I belong, I said let them put me on record that I vehemently opposed it. If you go back in history when we had native police, they were disbanded because of their excessive use of force.”
He said rather than agitate for state police, a well-put together model for community policing should be put in place or the federal police should be decentralised but under the same control.
