Give Us State Police Now, Governors Tell Jonathan

Governor Rotimi Amaechi, Chair of the Nigeria Govs Forum

Nigeria’s thirty-six governors have called on President Goodluck Jonathan to urgently consider the establishment of state police.
The governors are also demanding the establishment of a special intervention fund to enable them to combat terrorism in their states.
The governors’ forum expressed these demands in a communiqué at the end of a meeting that started on Sunday night but ended in the early hours of Monday.
The communiqué was read by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, the chairman of the Governors’ Forum. In the statement, the forum said it “strongly condemned the current state ???? and violence which has been drifting the nation towards anarchy and called for a multi-dimensional approach to security issues including enhanced co-ordination and collaboration among security forces, effective use of technology and intelligence, value re-orientation, employment generation and sincerity of purpose.”
In addition, the governors’ group declared its commitment “to convene a Governors’ Forum conference on security in Nigeria.”
The communiqué contended that state government finances are currently overstretched by security challenges and asked the Federal Government to provide a special intervention fund, especially to the states most affected by insecurity.
The forum also “identified the increasing need for state police as a strategy for combating the rising insecurity in the country.”
It was unclear whether the governors discussed the investment of their controversial security votes in programs aimed at combating rising security crises. Each Nigerian governor receives a hefty monthly sum ranging from $2 to $5 million that is purported to be for security issues. However, critics have said that the so-called security vote is one of the myriad ways governors and the Presidency siphon off public funds, since recipients of the fund are never obligated to account for how they were spent.
Some civil rights advocates have called for security votes to be rolled into the regular budgets of the police as well as other law enforcement and security agencies.