State governments and non-governmental organisations need to join the federal government in making deliberate efforts to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty in order to curb the rising insecurity in the country.
The Director General of the Progressives Governors Forum, PGF, Mr. Salihu Lukman who said this in Abuja added that there is a direct link between extreme poverty among the masses and the rising crime rate in Nigeria.
He called on the All Progressives Congress, APC government to led by President Muhammadu Buhari to create state policing which he said would contribute to reducing the high rate of crime in the country.
Mr. Lukman said the determinant that would lead to a peaceful coexistence and success of the APC government is to move beyond politicising poverty in the country and taking deliberate and target oriented actions to end mass poverty.
While pointing out statistics that show that poverty is extremely higher in the Northern part of Nigeria than in the South, Mr. Lukman said the issue of alleviating poverty falls in the concurrent list, therefore the state governments need to be fully involved.
“Conscious that only two percent of Nigeria’s vast agricultural land resources are being utilised, what will be our annual targets? This is where given that statutorily our state governments are the custodians of lands based on the provision of the Land Use Act, states must be mobilised to play leading roles in implementing initiatives to achieve national targets. Certainly, the capacity to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty cannot be achieved with the same level of resource application in all these sectors. To what extent are we taking steps as a nation to mobilise the resources required to achieve lifting of 100 million Nigerians out of poverty?
Lukman said.
He noted that with the rising level of kidnapping of schoold children, individuals, terrorism and other crimes, state policing should not be a matter of political debate.
“The reality is that criminal activity of banditry, kidnappings and abduction of innocent school children are emerging to be very lucrative economic activities in the country. It is now a sophisticated business network with frontend that may involve people and institutions that are least suspected.
“And with all these sad reality of our existential threats in the country, which is destroying our educational sector, we are debating whether we should have state police or not. Anybody debating whether or not to have state police is simply part of the problem. How many private securities are guarding our homes? With all that is happening to our schools, isn’t it a case that require the establishment of armed police station in each school to guarantee the safety of our children? Can this be provided by the Nigeria Police as it is constituted today? Isn’t this a challenge requiring emergency response? How can the lives of school children be so threatened, and we are busy debating politics? Our leaders in APC must wake up and stop all the hesitation around consideration of the APC True Federalism Report. Why was the Committee setup in the first place if our leaders knew that they are not committed to resolving problems that question what we have today? Isn’t it a common knowledge that no problem can be solved by replicating exactly what may have created the problem?” he said.
Nnenna.O
