Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Thursday listed seven things Nigeria needs to do urgently.
The governor made the suggestions in his welcome remarks at the Federal Government Townhall Meeting on National Security, held at the Main Lecture Theatre of the Kaduna State University (KASU).
He said, “I wish to suggest that this country requires urgent action as follows:
1) Identify, focus on and deal decisively with all state and non-state actors engaged in conduct that amounts to challenging the supremacy of the Nigerian state and our Constitution without ethnic profiling or discriminatory treatment;
2) Provide immediate and enhanced funding to acquire advanced equipment, armament and ordinance for the armed forces, police, security and paramilitary agencies;
3) Centralised policing in a federation is not only a contradiction in terms. The state governments today bear most of the burden of the running costs of the Federal Police anyway, so why not the sub-nationals the state police now. So I repeat my persistent call for State Police as soon as possible.
4) We should also devolve more responsibilities and duties to the states to enable greater accountability and minimise the habit of blaming the Federal Government for every ill in Nigeria. We should therefore expeditiously amend the Constitution to vest all on-shore minerals, including petroleum in the states now.
5) A unitary and dysfunctional judiciary that is so slow in dispensing justice that it amounts to being on the side of the criminals need to be decentralised and reformed. The Constitution should be expeditiously amended to remove the unitary control of the superior courts and federalise our judiciary now.
6) Be emphatic about the right of every citizen to security, freedom of movement and rights of residence, and that the choice of livelihoods must conform to the laws of the land;
7) Finally, to address the banditry prevalent in the north-west and north-central, we must implement the National Livestock Transformation Plan already produced four years ago to enable accelerated investment in modern animal husbandry, incorporating the rapid sedentarisation of herders in known locations.
