The Association of South East Town Unions (ASETU) have re-echoed the need for Nigeria to have a State Police.
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This was disclosed by the National President of South East Town Unions, ASETU, Chief Emeka Diwe.
Diwe said Nigeria is passing through perilous times and requires urgent steps to steer it away from disaster. He said Nigeria has gone full circle in pretending about some of the basic questions that touch on its survival and progress.
In a condolence message to the families of the victims of the recent attacks by herdsmen in Ebonyi State, the Town Union leader regretted that human lives are being lost on a daily basis in Nigeria and the Government pretends that all is well. He maintained that the security of lives and property is the first rationale for governance, and said it has become imperative to rethink the way Nigeria is structured in order to realize the core mandate of political governance.
According to him, “Unfolding events have made it expedient for us to come together and salvage Nigeria. We can’t continue to live in denial while our nation keeps drifting towards the edge of a precipice. Lives and property are no longer safe anywhere in Nigeria, and this makes it inescapable to tinker with our federal arrangement, to normalize it, to make it functional”
“Security under a typical federal system is not an exclusive preserve of the central government. It is most importantly a local affair, given that a mastery of the terrain and prior knowledge of the people and their peculiar tendencies are key in achieving security and are things which are realizable only through an indigenous security architecture. Policing a state like Adamawa with people who knew nothing about the state before being posted there has never achieved the desired results. Creation of state police is one solution which beats at the hearts everyone and is an idea which time has come.”
Diwe also lamented that the people at the grassroots who the Town Unions represent bear a greater burden as a result of the pervasive insecurity in the country. He said the lives and property that are lost are always those of the poor, defenseless and vulnerable people at the grassroots, even as he restated the commitment of ASETU to ensuring that their welfare is attained.