Senator representing Abia South Senatorial District, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has cautioned the federal government against transferring funds for state policing to state governments.
Abaribe said money for state policing must be constitutionally supported and must go directly to the commission set up for that purpose.
He said this during the consideration of the bill titled, “A Bill for an Act to Alter the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 to Provide for the Establishment of State Police; and for Related Matters (Sixth Alteration), on the floor of the Senate.
The lawmaker said if the state police money was properly channeled, what happened to the local government money would not happen again.
He said: “Funds that must be go to the state police commission must be guaranteed by the constitution and go directly to the commission so that what we are seeing today with regards to local government funds, we don’t have to see it with the police because if we do that then for people like us who come from the Southeast where two or three kilometers you see 10 checkpoints, you will now have hundred checkpoints by state people who have to fend for themselves if they don’t have the requisite funding.
I was one of those against state police but today we know that we have very serious insecurity problems that can only be solved by thinking out of the box.
“Today, we know that states have more money than before and we also had the era in which states didn’t have so much money, which means that he who pays the piper will also hear the tune.”
