Senate Leader, Sen. Opeyemi Bamidele, on Wednesday provided further details on how the proposed state police services would be insulated from the abuse of some political actors.
He said that their funding should be a first-line charge in the ongoing amendment to the 1999 Constitution.
Bamidele, who is also Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution, warned that business, cabals, criminals and some other organisations could equally abuse the state police services if their financial independence was not guaranteed.
He pointed this out in a statement by his Directorate on Media and Public Affairs while acknowledging various concerns, which key stakeholders had expressed on the state police bill.
Bamidele acknowledged that nearly all public concerns on the state police proposal “are well founded and obviously cannot be swept under the carpet considering their weight and enormity.”
He observed that a lot of these concerns “are informed by what has happened under the First Republic when the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions accorded the regional authorities the powers to establish police force for its province or any part of its province.”
Considering the gravity of these concerns, Bamidele explained that the National Assembly had been developing a multi-tiered guardrail or safeguard that would emphasise personnel’s discipline, while encouraging institutional independence and fiscal autonomy.
He pointed out the resolve of the National Assembly to make the funding of the state police services first-line charge enshrined in the law of the country for state police service the way it was in the judiciary.
He explained that the funding of the judiciary was provided for in the 1999 Constitution.
“The Chief Justice of Nigeria, for instance, does not have to take her file to the President for approval on every procurement unlike a minister or any member of the Federal Executive Council that must secure presidential approval to spend any money.
“That is why we called it a first line charge. In other words, the Commissioner of Police and State Police Service Commission must have a guaranteed source of funds provided for in the 1999 Constitution.
“This is in a way that the police chief will not be subject to the whims and caprices of a state governor”.
