Ondo State Governor and the Chairman, South-West Governors Forum, Rotimi Akeredolu, has advised President Muhammadu Buhari to address Nigerians on the worsening insecurity in the country.
Akeredolu, made this appeal yesterday while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today, monitored by our reporters.
According to him, though it is a known fact that the president would not support criminals, it is important for him “to come out and say that those with illegal arms should be arrested and before it gets out of hand, the security agencies should be awake, without rest, to ensure that open grazing s banned.
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‘From there, laws should follow banning the practice.’
Akeredolu cautioned against profiling ethnic groups as criminals saying that ‘the important thing is that we should appreciate that we are fighting criminals and not have to call them by any ethnic names.’
He also said the rising insecurity in the land called for a firm decision on state police.
He said the security architectures needed to be rejigged for policing to be effective across the nation to make them more effective.
He said: ‘We need to discuss how effective our security apparatus is now, how can we continue in this security architecture in this country in which you have a command in Abuja for the policing? It will not work and is not working.
‘A lot of governors have spoken on this and the time is now for a decision to be taken. I thought there is a bill in the National Assembly about having state police, the time is now because the level of insecurity has given rise to state security. This is when we can hit the name when it is hot.’
Akeredolu also asked the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore to stop defending foreign herders and join hands with government and police authorities to treat them as criminals, kidnappers, bandits, and other perpetrators of crimes.
He said it was expedient for the police and other security agencies to identify criminal foreign herders, go into investigation fully and prosecute culpable ones.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK