Advantages of State and City Police Under True Federalism

Advantages of State and City Police under True Federalism. (Part One)
By Zents Sowunmi

Under true Federalism, there will be little resources to steal at the Federal level, attention will be focused on the development in each state, or city, meaning, instead of stealing from all of us collectively as a nation, a corrupt politician can only steal from his own state and importantly or probably from his own tribe.

How do we get to this? Among other issues that will be discussed in the subsequent chapters of this write up power or control must be taken to the State and city level, for example, State police is not good enough if it is not backed with City Police and County Police where It is difficult or expensive to run City Police.

Why ?

The Law on decentralization of Police must ensure we protect our political differences that is why City Police must be independent of the State Police, without City Police we will be prolonging the problems that come without this bold step.

Two options are important to look into as to who controls the City Police. Let us take Ogun State as case study. Let us assume Ogun East Senatorial politically are PDP members while those in the Cities like Ijebu Igbo Ago Iwoye or Odo Potu in the same Senatorial district are APC.

The State Police alone can be used to silence politically all other cities in the district not sharing the same political differences with the Governor in Abeokuta.
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The law must ensure State Police can not politically encroach on the rights of everyone in any part of the state, no matter what they believe in to ensure safety and protection of political differences, for this very reason, the City and local govt Police must be created,

Who controls the City Police if the State Governor is not the boss?

We have two options, we can make use of what we have already by upgrading the power of traditional institutions to assume the role of Mayor’s or create Mayoral system of Administration for each urban City or local government and let the Emir’s or Oba take supervisory role

However, we can separate our traditional rulers from politics to make the elected Mayors report to the Paramount Ruler Like Oba or Emir’s in each state. For example all the Mayors in all the Six local governments in Ogun State that are Egba will report to Alake of Egba or the most senior King under the the council of Oba.

The same process in Remo, Ijebu Ode and Yewa, with that, we keep them busy and much more in charge of the safety and security of their people, or we upgrade each of the role of traditional rulers in each town to supervisory role over elected Mayors.

How will the City Police and Mayor function?

To be continued.

Chief Zents Kunle Sowunmi
author of The vultures and the Vulnerable a political history of Nigeria since 1945.