The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November 16 Anambra elections, Dr. Chris Ngige has declared that the Nigeria Police “as presently constituted, incapable of providing security to everybody”
Ngige, who was speaking during the Channels Television’s organized Town Hall Conversation with candidates of contesting political parties, added that this is so because “they are poorly funded”.
As a member of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, he revealed that “30 per cent of police budget in the state formations are funded by the respective state governments” adding that “the Council of state and the National Economic Council have a proposal that two per cent of the revenue of the country be used for the police”.
He also noted that the conditions, welfare, logistics for work and the working equipment of the Nigeria Police is nothing to write home about insisting that “you don’t give what you don’t have”.
He also debunked the notion that state policing is usually used for political reasons insisting that “times have changed”.
Using an English adage “Necessity is the mother of all inventions”, Ngige said the security challenge the state is facing made him to invent “a vigilante services that comes up from the community level to the local government level and up to the state level and trained them in the conventional police system” to curb the security challenges the state was facing in 2003.
He argued that if he is voted into office, he will do it again noting that “that is what my security votes is for” insisting that the main function of government Is to protect its citizens.
