Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has suggested that Nigeria needs multi-level policing to adequately address the insecurity challenges bedevilling the country.

Mr Fayemi who spoke during an Arise TV broadcast on Tuesday proposed that some items be taken off the exclusive list of the constitution and devolved to the state and local authorities, adding that Nigeria is the only country with a unitary policing system.

“If you have come across my Arewa House lectures, you would have seen some of the suggestions I made on reducing the number of items we have on our exclusive list of the constitution and devolving those to the state and local authorities,” Mr Fayemi said.

“The number 1 issue that I raised in that lecture speaks to internal security because clearly, we need multi-level policing. And when we say multi-level policing we are not calling for an abrogation of federal policing we are only saying that federal policing has to be complemented by other levels of policing, because we happen to be the only Federal state in the whole of the world that I know that has a unitary policing system,” he added.

Mr Fayemi’s call for the decentralisation of the police force is not a strange clamour amongst state governors.

Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state had in the heat of the Ibarapa crisis revealed that he was not in control of the police force in Oyo, pleading with President Buhari to dispatch a special force to help quell the conflict in the state.

In a similar vein, the Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo state during his inauguration for a second term in office renewed the clamour for the decentralisation of the nation’s policing system to empower sub-nationals to secure their spaces. Mr Akeredolu said every state must be allowed to secure its space.