The Senate, yesterday, approved the decentralisation of the police force to achieve efficiency and tackle insecurity challenges across the country.
It, therefore, urged the executive arm of government to decentralise the Police Command structure with operational and budgetary powers vested in the zonal commands.
The upper chamber also recommended that all Joint operations should be carried out strictly in compliance with extant operational procedures provided in the Armed Forces Act.
These resolutions followed recommendations by the Senate ad-hoc committee on security challenges.
However, Chairman of the committee, Yahaya Abdullahi said investigations revealed that there were existing ill-defined operational boundaries and overlapping jurisdictions among security services.
According to him, “there is a lot of incoherence and inter-personnel conflict which have led to a lot of antagonism within the security organizations.”
The lawmaker blamed the high level of inefficiency among security agencies on lingering inter-personnel disputes.
“The absence or inadequacies of effective corrective mechanisms within those institutions allowed inter-personal disputes to fester thereby undermining the operational efficiency of the services,” he said.
He added that, “most of the agencies are working on isolation with very little, if any, coordination between them. This most unfortunate situation now can be seen from the recent face-off between the office of the Inspector-General of Police and the Police Service Commission which degenerated into open litigation in the law courts.
“Most recently, the public release of letters from the National Security Adviser’s Office to the Service Chiefs discountenancing their engagement with the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, bordering on security matters, is a loud testament of the level of disharmony, inter-personnel conflict and intrigued within the nation’s security and Defence establishments.”
Abdullahi observed further that the alleged non-funding of the Office of the National Security Adviser since 2015 has undermined the effective performance of its coordinating function in the Security Architecture, and has led many agencies to question its authority and relevance in various fora, thereby adversely affecting inter-service cooperation and intelligence sharing.