The Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari, has, for the umpteenth time, stressed the need for state policing to end the prevailing insecurity in he country.
The governor, whose state has been under intense fire from bandits and insurgents, said the country must embrace multi-level policing otherwise called state police.
While decrying the growing insecurity in the country, Masari expressed concern that the number of policemen available to his state were less than 3,000 and therefore not enough to protect the citizens.
Masari, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, who spoke in an interview at the weekend, therefore, reiterated his support for state police, saying there was a need for it to be accommodated in the constitution.
“Knowing full well how long it will take the police to improve its capacity to be able to provide the much-needed security for villages and communities, are you saying people should fold their arms?
“If somebody slaps you, the natural instinct is to raise your hands up, and if he comes with a stick, you take a stick to protect yourself,” he said.
The president’s home state governor disclosed that this week, his government would complete the training of 500 vigilantes, who were trained by the police and armed forces, saying in the coming week, training for another 500 would be completed.
He said the target was to have 3,000 trained vigilante working with the police and other security agencies.
“The situation we have on ground is such that bandits would come to a village, kidnap and collect over N500,000 from villagers and in some cases get N5 million from them.
“And in same village, when you say come let us contribute and train these vigilantes to defend them at night, they would not give you N20,000,” he said.
Defending his recent call for citizens to defend themselves as the way out of the the present situation, Masari argued that the efforts his administration made to achieve peace in his first two years in office could not be sustained because same wasn’t made in Zamfara and some other neighboring states at that time.
“I have no regret in what I said (that people should defend themselves). But what is the natural instinct of every living thing? It is to protect himself against events happening around him for him to survive.
“Let me give you a simple scenario. Katsina State as of 2006 had a population of 5.6 million, even if we are growing at three per cent, what would be the population by 2021?
“We are projecting a population of seven to eight million. Now, what is the total strength of the police in Katsina? The total strength of the police in the state is not up to 3,000. So, if you divide the number of policemen by the population, you have an average of one policeman to over 200,000 people. What form of ammunition does the policemen have?” he said.
Speaking further, Masari explained that, in his state, a local government with 34 policemen, had over 300 villages and towns to secure.
“They (police) lack logistics in terms of equipment to move around, they lack the necessary weapons and above all, they lack the technology.
“If you look at the military, how many are they in Katsina? The military are in all the states of the country, what equipment and level of technology are they applying? Look, when you are faced with reality of daily killings, daily kidnappings, daily raping and daily cattle rustling, you will understand. In Katsina, we wake up every day to these realities,” Masari added.
