“If Governors have State Police,… They will Intimidate Opponents” -Ex-Commissioner of Ploice

Former Lagos State Commissioner of Police and current Commissioner at Public Complaints Commission, Abubakar Tsav, has responded to the plans by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) to create state police.

While speaking with newsmen in Lagos on Thursday, Tsav decried the idea expressing that the existence state police will result in the force being a pawn in the hands of governors.

The elder statesman said, “If the governors have state police, they will do what they like. What causes problems in our society is injustice. When peoples’ rights are infringed, they go to the Police to seek justice, and when they don’t get justice, a problem arises. We should not make the mistake of allowing the governors to have state police.

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“Doing that will amount to looking for trouble. A Police Commissioner will be at the beck and call of a state governor. He will do whatever a state governor wants him to do, and these governors are very desperate and want to remain in power at all costs.

He emphasized that governors will have the liberty to intimidate citizens at will.

“When they have state Police, they can use it to harass and intimidate their opponents. We are not yet ripe for state police. I think what the governors should do is to support the Police by allowing them to do their job without interference. When we are civilised, we can start thinking about that but not now.”

Meanwhile, in a statement police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood,the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, has questioned Nigeria’s maturity to have a State Police.

Idris said, “Those agitating for state police should consider the level of our political maturity,”

Naija News recalls that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum had constituted a six man committee to devise modalities on the creation of state police.