Security reforms are needed to secure Nigeria - CISLAC

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has called for security reform in the country, lamenting the poor use of security votes by state governors.

Auwal Rafsanjani, the Executive Director of CISLAC made the statement yesterday, August 11, 2020 at a stakeholers' workshop on effective use of criminal justice complaint channels in Kaduna.

According to CISLAC, for Nigeria to get out of the current security challenges, the country must embrace a security reform, where most of the security votes are channelled directly to fund the security agencies, rather than being diverted by state executives.

"We need a security reform if we must have a secure Nigeria. We need to update the training and improve welfare of our security agents, especially the police.

"We need to address the poor funding, the way recruitments and promotions are happening, which is demotivating. We want security operations to be professionalized," he said.

CISLAC maintained that, the governors' security votes put at N208.8 billion yearly and are unaccounted for, dwarfed the yearly budget of the army, navy, police and the air force in the past five years.

"We must wake up to the reality that we cannot have a secure country with underfunded police. We cannot continue with this inadequate number of police personnel.

"Presently, Nigeria has just about 400,000 police personnel; unfortunately, almost half of the number guard the elite, some of them not in government," he concluded.

In attendance at the workshop were representatives of the police, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), Federal High Court, media and other civil society groups.