 Thanks for staying with us. The bill to introduce state police has killed second reading in the National Assembly. And we're being joined by Mr. Abioddon Shoramy, who is a political affairs analyst who will be talking on this topic. Good morning and welcome to the program, Mr. Shoramy. Okay. I can't seem to hear you. I don't know. Yeah. Good morning. Okay. Good. Thank you. Very good. Thank you for your first, second reading. And you know, we are very close to it. What are your concerns or what are your high points, if you may, whatever it is? Yes. We've been on this issue of state police as part of federalism. When you practice through federalism in the federation, you only have the federating units and the coordinating center, which is the federal government. And therefore, the idea of maintaining security is the responsibility of both the federal and the constituting states, you know, in the case of Nigeria. But what we have is over the years, the state governors have been tasked with the responsibility of being the chief security officer of their state with no control, no direct control over either the appointment, the choice, or the discipline, or the regulation of the conduct of police institutions within their state. So consequently, making them just like a paper with chief security officer, the control has always been the center simply because the schedule in the schedule of the attached to the constitution, the responsibility for policing is strictly that of the exclusive right of the federal government is not on the concurrent list. And because of that, we've had series of issues over a period of time relating to security of lives and property in different parts of the country. The weaknesses of the federal structure, federal policing structure, you know, then became so obvious. It is not more obvious than now that even people could not go to farm. Many people felt threatened and being harassed locally and the response time, you know, from the federal government has always been very slow. States we have been able to arrest security challenges as states where they have a kind of a mini-health fit, a mini-security health fit provided for by the state's assistive assembly, but they are not as equipped or coordinated as the Nigerian police force. So learning from that angle and coming from that one, learning from it, it then becomes so obvious that states, police institutions can only help to improve security. Because the states are concerned, they know the environment, they are concerned about security issues in the environment. Nobody knows everybody, certain communities and therefore it would be a lot easier to police those communities. Unlike trying to police the whole country from Abuja, you know, it can't work and that has become so obvious. So one must say the time is right for legislation to change the situation. Fortunately, those who are opposed to state police are now the one, you know, championing the cause currently because of the security situation in the country. You can imagine if you have state police in Benway, it will have been impossible, almost impossible, you know, to have sustained killings of people as what we are witnessing in Benway. Same thing in Canada, that would not have been possible because the governors would have bracing to the occasion and stop the carnage, you know, going on in those parts of the country. Okay, what about the recruitment process? Do you think it should be left for the state or the recruitment and training should be done by the federal and then the states will take over? When you look at the bill, which is being, which has just passed through the second state, they're trying to address some of the concerns of people who think maybe the issue of standardization would be a problem at what stage will the federal police get involved? How would we ensure that the commissioner of police in the state is not turned into a tool of the governor and all that? They've been trying to address some of the issues, including recruitment and standardization. Of course, they will be trained to the same standard as federal police and that is part of the reason why the commissioner of police is being suggested as contained in this bill, which has just passed the second reading, to come from the federal police. Federal answerable to the state governor, including, you know, the state police service commission, which will have the utmost responsibility for this. So it's, if the bill has been pushed currently, you know, can see the light of the day, I have no doubt that at least the recruitment will be the same, you know, the standard, the training of operational procedures and all of that will be the same. And some of the fears of those who are opposed to state police may not be realized eventually because they are trying to build in safeguards into it to ensure that those will not happen. It's a different thing whether it will not pass, go through the required, apart from national assembly, the required to talk of states, houses of assembly, if it's approved as it is being presented currently. I think we will have done a long way to address the issue of standardization, the issue of operational procedure, the issue of at what stage can the federal police get involved is when there's a total breakdown of law and other, and again on the invitation of the state governor. So I think they are working on a very good bill, which we should be supported. Okay. My concern is having state police is one thing, but being able to fund it is another thing. A lot of states have not even been able to pay minimum wage and all that. And right now the sharing formula for the allocation of the FARC allocation is 52% to the federal government while 26% comes to the states and 20% or 20.6% comes to the local government. Can these states fund these state police that we're talking about or will just have state police very strong in one state and in the other state because they cannot fund it? Maybe they have just 10,000 personnel? Well, currently many of the state governments are funding a section of police, even though it's on the exclusivist list, they do not have responsibility for it currently. If you go to some states, in legal states you have RRS, in local states you have KRS. You have all these manners of formations all over the whole place, including buying minamod vehicles for police, including buying uniform guns and all that. We have records of that going on currently in order to keep the federal police. So basically it means even the federal government has not been able to adequately equip the Nigerian police force. That is what that shows. But when it comes to the issue of state police, we should not forget that the funding of it will actually come from the federal allocation. It's not a matter of asking the states to provide state police without providing the means for the states to finance them. Of course there would have to be an adjustment to the federal, to the sharing principle of the federal allocation in order to make provision for it. Otherwise we will only have maybe a third of the states or 50% of the states able to adequately fund state police while the rest are unable to adequately fund them. But if we think the cost of policing is high, we really need to look at the cost of not policing. That is society would fracture and probably collapse. Currently people are worried not only about poverty, they are worried about insecurity. And we see now insecurity can affect food production in the country. And that has partly led to the rising cost of foodstuffs in the country. So therefore it's important for us to have state police at the same time and show that they are adequately funded to the same standards in each states. Okay Mr. Shoomi, we'd like to thank you for being a part of our show today. I'm glad that a lot of people are on the same page about this state police. And we do hope that the right policies, the right T's and the I's are dotted and crossed so that we have state police that will make us proud and security will be top notch. Thank you for being a part of our program today. Thank you for having me. We've been talking to Mr. Abyo, don't show me a public affairs analyst. We were talking about the fact that state police, the bill for state police has passed the second reading in the National Assembly. We'll take a short break now. We'll return with the next hot topic. Stay with us.