Rabiu Kwankwaso, the presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) says he will recruit one million personnel into the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and Nigerian Army (NA) to combat insecurity if elected president next year.
The NNPP candidate stated this in a interview with Daily Trust, adding that technology will also be used to fight banditry and terrorism ravaging parts of the country.
In the North, terrorism and banditry flourish and has been described as a business venture by Governor Nasir El-rufai. In the South, while secessionist activities are rife in the South-West and South-East geo-political zones, unknown gunmen and violent pastoralists seems to become the new normal.
Explaining how he intends to tackle the monster, Mr Kwankwaso said he will increase the manpower of the military while adopting dialogue in dealing with secessionists, an intention Peter Obi, standard-bearer of the Labour Party (LP) expressed recently.
“As a former minister of defence and as a chief security officer of Kano for eight years, and as someone who has had the opportunity to go to Darfur and Somalia, we have seen a lot over the years and we sat down and came up with a security architecture,” he told the national daily. “We looked at the world over and looked at our situation and realised that the numbers are much lower than expected and it’s an open secret that the Nigerian military has been overstretched.
“Nigerian military needs to increase their numbers and going by the best international practice, we thought that about one million military personnel will do the job.
“It’s not just to have peace in Nigeria, if you have peace in Nigeria and her neighbours do not have peace, then we will have issues. That is why we are looking beyond the local peace,” he added.
