Ojota Shooting Justifies Tinubu’s Call For State Police – SRG

A socio-political organisation, Social Rehabilitation Gruppe (SRG) has condemned in strong terms the recent shooting and alleged brutality in Ojota, Lagos, but said the unfortunate incident only justified

the consistent call by Bola Tinubu for introduction of state police to curb excesses from local security agencies.

The Coordinator andConvener of SRG, Dr. Charles Marindoti Oludare, in a statement signed by the group’s National publicity Secretary, Mr. Kayode Fasua “condemned in totality, use of gunshots to disperse peaceful protesters by policemen, as reported, saying such should be condemned by all peoples of good conscience.

Marindoti said, “The police standing between us and chaos should not be landing all of us in chaos.”

The SRG demurred that “this is a sad reminder of the refusal of the Nigerian state to adopt the state police architecture for interior security, long advocated by the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

While commiserating with families of victims of the attack, the SRG urged Nigerians to seize the occasion of next month’s presidential election to vote for a candidate that would advance the cause of true federalism.

“If we had operated Local/State Police in concert with other federal investigative and intelligence agencies, a peaceful protest would not have turned bloody, especially as prospective leaders of the protesters would have been legally profiled by the state police apparatus, whose men and officers are members of the community.

“In our community, despite our differing culture and ethnicity, we know each other, as it is the case in every community in the Nigerian federation. The police will know the people living in that community, root out outside crisis actors and protect the peaceful protesters from the community, wherein they will mount the stump, address their gathering, and return home; without any incident.

” Our presidential system is ordinarily a carry-over of the American system, but local circumstances have given us a perverted version and we are all suffering for it,” Oludare, the SRG helmsman lamented.

Oludare also reinforced the group’s belief in restructuring, which does not mean secession, but devolution of power to constituent states and local councils of the federation for effective administration; which Tinubu and other progressive stakeholders have stood for. If the people feel empowered, that they have the rights to self determination within the Nigerian state, these secessionist groups would have lost the locus of their regional agitations, hence they die a natural death.

The SRG, however, called on the Police Service Commission to adopt a culture of regular orientation courses for footmen in the police service, noting that many of them have given vent to “the unfortunate culture of brute force, prevalent in the police attitude to the civil populace”.

The group also urged Nigerians to vote according to their conscience, noting that vote-buying, rigging, and other electoral malpractices will only retard the progress of growing Nigeria’s democracy.

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