A chieftain of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, has called on President Bola Tinubu and the party and National Assembly leadership to, as a matter of urgency, implement the party's policy of decentralization of policing.

Olawepo-Hashim said the urgent implementation of the policy on state police would halt the seemingly unending high-profile crime of killings and kidnappings across the country.

In a statement he issued in Ilorin yesterday on the heels of the abduction and killing last Thursday of a monarch in Kwara state, the former presidential candidate said “I really do not understand the hesitation on the part of the President and the party leadership to lead the charge. Many state governments and Local Government Councils are controlled by APC. The Party also controls the National Assembly. Majority of State Houses of Assembly. So, it means the party can obtain the legislative consensus within one week to bring to birth state policing.”

Olawepo-Hashim argued that while immediate creation of local police would not stop all the problems of insecurity in Nigeria, it would solve about fifty percent of them.