Former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, says with the worsening spate of insecurity across Nigeria, the creation of state police structure has become a matter of compulsion and urgency, rather than choice.

Mr Ekweremadu who was a guest speaker at the 2021 Law Week event of the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Lagos on Monday said Nigeria’s current policing system had failed to tackle insecurity.

The Enugu West senator therefore called for the decentralisation of the police.

Mr Ekweremadu said the decentralisation of the police had become expedient in the face of rising waves of banditry and kidnapping across the country.

“Our policing system has failed woefully. There are no other federating states that have done what we are doing in policing.

“It is no surprise that with the capsizing of the national police, the nation’s security has also collapsed,’’ he said.

Mr Ekweremadu said that restructuring the police was no longer a matter of choice but a matter of urgency.

“In an instance where we have a decentralised police, we will have a federal police system and 774 police systems in all the 774 local governments in the 36 states and in Abuja.

“The implication, therefore, is that if the federal police fail, we have additional layers in 36 states; but right now, they are absent.

“Now that the federal policing have collapsed because they do not have the resources, the funding and the manpower, there is nothing to hold on to,” Mr Ekweremadu stressed.