Insecurity: Why State Police Remains Possible Option To Protect Lives -Okowa

Vice-Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Ifeanyi Okowa, has said that a veritable step for addressing insecurity in Nigeria was for states to provide their separate police systems.     Sen. Okowa made this known in his remarks at the annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria in Abuja noting that there had been a unanimous decision among the citizens for state police as a way of tackling the crime rate in the country.   He regretted that it was not favoured that the Federal Government had remained uninterested in the issue, however, assuring that the PDP administration would make a law to permit states to run their self-police systems.   According to him, “state police will ensure that indigenes of the state will protect lives and property in their areas, criminal activities would be reduced to the nearest minimum.”   Particularly, he noted that state police would assist in the effective execution of anti-open-grazing laws in the states.   He reaffirmed the commitment of the PDP government in the country will ensure that some powers were delegated to the states for better development of all areas nationwide if elected.   Continuing, he said, “the country’s economy was in a bad state, and promised that Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises MSMEs as the bedrock of every economy, an Alhaji Atiku Abubakar administration would give that sub-sector priority attention.   He added that “to attract and stimulate investment in the country under a PDP government, energy issues and other malignant infrastructural drawbacks would be aggressively addressed.”