The Judicial and executive arms of the federal and state governments of Nigeria have resolved to establish special courts to prosecute crimes along the lines of hate speech, kidnapping and terrorism.
The resolutions was made at the National Security retreat on Thursday.
The communique was made available to journalists on Sunday by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande.
According to Akande, the Federal Government would be helping states to develop a template on how such special courts would be established and managed.
He noted that concerns were raised about the delay in the entire criminal justice system in the country while the NEC concluded that prompt action by law enforcement agencies must be put in place.
Akande said: “NEC members urged prompt action in the arrest and prosecution of perpetrators of terrorist acts, kidnapping and purveyors of hate speeches.
“To facilitate this, the designation of special courts was also advocated and the consensus was that judicial and executive arms of the federal and state governments would be working together to establish such courts.”
He said the retreat which was convened to review current security challenges across Nigeria featured presentations on national security situation, terrorism in the northeast, herders/farmers clashes, ethno-religious crises, regional agitations for secession, hate speech, kidnapping and security challenges in the Niger/Delta.
He said the NEC recognised the herders/farmers conflict as a problem of land use,p which had “however taken an ethnic and religious coloration” and agreed that both the Federal Government and sates needed to properly define the problems and eschew the ethno-religious construction “of what is otherwise an economic challenge.”
He said the council observed that it would be useful to bring the different groups of herdsmen and the farmers together to meet and discuss as well as work out some of the issues affecting them.
The retreat also demanded that community policing model be immediately enforced ahead of the required constitutional amendment for state police.
It was agreed that policing the country and the entire law enforcement generally could not effectively continue without devolving policing and law enforcement out to the states.
Akande said the roll-out of community policing programme was intended to enhance crime prevention and control, improve intelligence-gathering capabilities of the police and deliver quality and people-oriented policing.
He said the programme would involve the community partnering with the police to uncover and solve crimes through a process involving town hall meetings to assess security situation and security priorities of the communities, the performance of the police and the nature of the support the communities can provide to improve the quality of policing.
He noted that Osinbajo directed the Inspector-General of Police to initiate community policing in line with the provisions of section 215(3) of the 1999 constitution as amended and section 10(1) of the Police Act.
“According to section 215(3) of the Constitution, “the President or such Minister of the Government of the Federation as he may authorise in that behalf may give to the Inspector-General of Police such lawful directions with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order as he may consider necessary and the Inspector-General of Police shall comply with those directions or cause them to be complied with.
“Also section 10 (1) of the Police Act, “the President may give to the Inspector-General such directions with respect to the maintaining and securing of public safety and public order as he may consider necessary, and the Inspector-General shall comply with those directions or cause them to be complied with.”
Akande also quoted the NEC as calling for greater accountability of the budget releases of the defence and other security agencies.
“While issues about the funding of security agencies and provision of equipments also featured in the discussion, NEC members agreed funding is indeed key. It was however added that defense budget and funding for other security agencies of government always forms some of the biggest component of the budget, and calls for greater accountability of the resources released were also made,” he stated.
He said the retreat stressed the need for a more effective coordination between the security and intelligence agencies to build a security community well synergized, without which optimal performance of different security and intelligence agencies might be difficult.
