Senate To Amend Constitution To Allow For State, Community Police

Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on Tuesday revealed that the Senate has started the process of amending the Constitution to allow for the creation of state and community Police.

Saraki made the revelation via his verified Twitter handle, while details were provided on the Medium page of the Senate President.

He said, “Today, my colleagues and I in the eighth Senate resolved to begin the process of amending the Constitution to allow for the creation of State and Community Police. This is following our debate on solutions to the killings across the country.”

The Senate also mandated that the Police Reform Bill be passed within the next two weeks.

This was following a debate on the killings across the nation and in Plateau State, following a Point of Order raised by Senator Jonah Jang.

“We have talked about the fact that whether these killings were initial acts of aggression or reprisal attacks, it is clear that either way, it is totally unacceptable and we must condemn it in all totality.

“Secondly, these are acts of criminality and we should not encourage any other colouration to it, be it religious or otherwise. This is criminality. And as such, we have a role to ensure that we must address this criminality to see how we can fight it.

“We have spoken on many platforms and made suggestions to the Executive on the fact that there is a need for an urgent review of the security architecture of the nation.

“We as the Senate must come up with our own actions. We do not need to flog the issue. We have told the Executive what to do. We have told them privately and we have told them publicly. However, on our own part, we must decide on what we need to do.