Senator Ali Ndume, a federal lawmaker representing Borno North Senatorial District, has said that the current number of police officers in the country are inadequate to effectively fight insecurity, news.ng reports.
Ndume on Arise Television on Wednesday night claimed that the current number of police personnel is less than 400,000, saying that the country would need 1 million officers.
Ndume, who disclosed that he voted for the constitutional amendment bill for the establishment of state police, said that the standard benchmark for police should be 200 to 400 police officers to 100,000 people.
He said, “The governor sat down, agreed, that yes, and more especially, as I said, what prompted me to 100% support this is, one, even the state police that we have, the numbers are not adequate. The number of total police in Nigeria is less than 400,000.
“In fact, less than, I think, you know, I don’t want to, I’m not sure of the figure, but it’s nothing to write home about. And looking at the UN, you know, benchmark for police, where by their standard, it’s supposed to be 200 to 400 police per 100,000 people, which we are not even near that. You understand, Nigeria of 200, over 200 million needs to mean a minimum of 1 million police.”
He, therefore condemned the current police structure in the country where the police operation is controlled by one Inspector-General of Police (IGP), saying it will not be effective.
“Yeah, but this is going to obviously increase. Fine, let me come to the second aspect. A vast country like Nigeria, if you have centralised the policing under one IGP, controlled by the centre, not decentralising it, it will never be effective.
And that is where we find ourselves. So what, I don’t see anything wrong with having a decentralised police system, that is to say the state police under the state governor, who is on one hand, every state governor, is a chief security officer,” he explained.
Watch the clip
