Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, has said that the Federal Government’s proposed state police reform aimed to address the limitations of Nigeria’s existing centralised policing system.
He said that Nigeria can no longer depend on a single policing system, adding that the Tinubu administration, in pursuing police reforms, had confronted an issue successive governments had avoided.
Gbajabiamila spoke on Monday at the 66th annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which is currently under way in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
The president’s aide, in a keynote address titled “Policing in Transition,” warned: “Centralised policing without safeguards will bring about more chaos.” He explained that the proposed reform is designed around a dual policing system to plug existing gaps.
He identified inadequate police manpower and deployment as major challenges, noting that Nigeria has about one policeman to every 650 people, compared with an international benchmark of one to every 450.
