Mr Dumebi Kachikwu, Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has promised to grant Local Government autonomy and also allow the establishment of State Police if elected on Saturday.
Kachikwu, made the pledge when he featured on an interview programme in Abuja.
Kachikwu said that people have a misconceived notion that state policing would benefit one ethnic group more than the other, or that people would take advantage of it.
“If you speak of state policing today, those in the federal structure will believe that the state governments will use it to garner more power.
“However, state policing is far more efficient policing.
“As a president of Nigeria what I will do, first of all, understanding that we are a multicultural, multi ethnic society; so to deal with state policing in a gradual manner, I will ensure that those who are Divisional Police Officer (DPOs) are from the senatorial districts.
“We will do this for a period of five years before we can then start taking and ensuring that we have people who can be elected as police chiefs in our different local governments.”
Kachikwu said that state policing would be structured in such a way that the police would be answerable to the people.
” We appreciate President Muhammadu Buhari for his moves to ensure that the local governments get autonomy. But some state governments are fighting this.
“Untill we begin to obey the principles of our Constitution and ensure that we have three arms of government, Nigeria cannot develop.
” The local governments we have today still see themselves as errand boys to the state governors. They don’t understand that they are governments on their own.”
Kachikwu said local government were established to take development down to the innermost parts of Nigeria.
”People do not understand the three-tiers of government so they will not support it. But I will reverse this if elected president.