Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, has thrown his weight behind the establishment of the South West regional security outfit, Amotekun, saying there was nothing wrong with an initiative to help the security agencies to police the vast areas of Nigeria.
Atiku, who was the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 23, 2019 election, joined the debate on the side of support for the outfit, which has generated a lot of dust since it was launched a fortnight ago.
Emphasising his support for the project, the former VP reiterated that as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution, the primary responsibility of government, at any level, was the protection of lives and property of the citizen.
Conveying his position in a statement by his spokesman, Paul Ibe, Atiku, wrote, said that even in the first republic before Nigeria experienced the pull to the centre, there were many security arrangements through which the various component units assisted the police in carrying out security functions.
The statement, read: “In carrying out this function, the state employs different layers of measures to ensure effective and efficient policing.
“It is without doubt that in the past decade particularly, the current policing administration in our dear country had been stretched to its limits and it is obvious that the reality of our domestic security upheaval will demand of us to recalibrate our police systems.
“In the First Republic, before we gravitated too much to the center, policing was done federally with each native authority and region having some mechanisms to deal with little upsets that were the security concerns of those times.
“In the present day Nigeria, there is hardly any state of the federation that does not contend with some type of security challenges.
“Because our security challenges are diverse in forms and impacts, it is thus incumbent that centrally controlled police architecture cannot exclusively deal with those challenges.
“Consequently, there is need for the creation of additional policing structures in the country to address the rapidly growing challenges of insecurity and crime.
“The time is ripe to seriously confront the reality of insecurity in the country by addressing the urgency of introducing state police, zonal police and community policing to complement the efforts of the current federal police.
“It is obvious that current levels of insecurity in the country are giving rise to major initiatives such as Amotekun and the issue need not be controversial in the first place.
“The police are likely to be more effective if they constantly operate in the same local community or local government because such closeness might create a bond with the local people, thereby enabling community cooperation and participation that would engender proactive outcomes in crime prevention.
“Nigeria is a vast country facing enormous security challenges and, therefore, there is the urgent need to create more security structures at the local levels to reduce the burden on the federal police.
“The issue of security shouldn’t be politicised and monopolised in the face of our current alarming security challenges characterised by the fear of even travelling on our highways by the citizens who might be intercepted by kidnappers and taken hostage for ransom.
“Local policing shouldn’t be mistaken for an effort to hijack the role of the federal police or a competition with the federal government.
“The obvious inadequacies of the federal police to effectively deal with these rapidly growing security challenges make local policing not only desirable, but also necessary.
“The police are more likely to be effective in areas where they are well known and trusted by the local communities who in turn will offer their service.
