Two events occurred last week, which to an extent will shape discussions in Nigeria for a long time to come.
Either they result in the affirmative decisions of Nigeria’s future or it will introduce New thinking into the body polity, it nevertheless will be a watershed.
PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM
When on Wednesday February 14, sixty members of Nigeria’s the lower chamber led by Honourable Abdulasamaad Dasuki led others to sponsor legislation to return the country to Parliamentary System of government, it sounded skeptical to many.
They are skeptical not necessarily because the idea is unthinkable as the sponsors are products of the present system which made governance expensive but because the leader of the group is a blueblood Northern politician regarded usually as obstacles to enthroning good governance in Nigeria.
The Northern political class is also seen as opposed to change to true Federalism, being beneficiaries of the present expensive system.
But then, members from other parts of the country especially the South who are in the forefront of such calls are also beneficiaries of the expensive legislative house, at least personally if not for their people.
Secondly, is hard to believe the legislators would want to commit class suicide by proposing a system which, if passed into law, may render them jobless.
But Dasuki appears determined with his friends insisting their conviction that the present system borrowed from the United States is too expensive and also alienated elected officials from the people.
Does it mean Dasuki and his colleagues had rejected the humongous salaries and the N130m for providing limo SUVs for each of them at a time when the economic condition of the nation has taken a nose dive.
Though he promised that his group will go round the states to convince the governors and state assemblies to support them in effecting change in the Constitution, giving themselves eight years to actualise their dream is also tantamount to reaping fully from the present system before leaving the stage for a new political class which would assume leadership in the new system.
Could it mean that the Group of 60 are voice of Jacob and hand of Esau?
Time will tell.
STATE POLICE
The previous week,this column wrote on the much talked about project, state police, alluding that it is a project whose time has come.
As timely as it sounds, Thursday Valentine day, President Bola Tinubu,.the man who has had to confront more challenges in his eight months rule, announced the decision between him and state governors to allow state police.
Like the call for the return of the country to the Parliamentary System, the call for state police has never enjoyed both the support of the key Northern political elite and retired Generals who perceive same as a gradual descent to breaking up the country.
Olusegun Obasanjo, two times President, has never hidden his disdain for such so are the Arewa groups who viewed state police creation as steps to the dismemberment of Nigeria.
Only General Ibrahim Babangida, a self styled Military President, among many influential Northern leaders, believe in state police.
But with the prevalence of insecurity of lives and property all over the country, the problem has reached a head.
With the agreement among the governors last week, which cut across political parties, it would appear the country is about to reach a consensus on key issues threatening its corporate existence -State Police.
It is also a signal that creating state police and the fears of its not being used has given way to realistic appraisal of the country’s grave security state, especially the influence of foreign non-state actors from the Sahel and other West African countries whose involvement has compounded the problems of insecurity threatening even the lives of those opposed to its creation for reasons best known to them.
With the intrusion of small arms from wartorn Libya, Sudan and the Islamic extremist groups led by El Shabaab, it is not impossible that those opposed to state police are having a change of mind principally because of threats to their lives, living and by extension power and influence.
Beside the above factors, the growing power and threats of banditry and kidnapping which, from all signs, knows no ethnic or religious colour, appears to have played a role of fear in the political cum social elite initially opposed to state police.
The Nigeria Police Force, NPF, according to IGP Kayode Egbetokun, is just 190,000 short of the United Nations’ requirement of officers to police the country. Today, the Federal Police has 371,800 men, but Tinubu and the governors were able to reach an agreement on the need to increase the number of men of the Federal Police.
They should not stop at that.
Since Tinubu himself said talks will commence by stakeholders on modalities for creating state police, it is imperative that besides the Forest Rangers who are to curb banditry in forest reserves all over the country, empowering local governments to have their own police to replace various security outfits like Hisbah, Amotekun and their counterparts in the South East parts of the country remains the only far-reaching solution to insecurity problems confronting the diverse country.
If Nigeria is diverse, solving its multidimensional security issues requires thinking out of the box to fashion reliable security outfits to ensure the safety of citizens, which remains the first task of any government.
Nothing must be spared in amending the Constitution for a realistic policing system for the country.
