According to analysts, who would not want their names in
print, a legislative police that would be controlled by the legislature had
become imperative given the use of the police by the executive arm of
government to harass and intimidate other arms of government, particularly the
legislature.
Reference is made to the perennial use of the police to
brazenly interfere in the affairs of the other arms of government simply because
the operational control of the security agency is vested in the executive by
the 1999 Constitution.
Last Monday’s incident in the Benue State House of Assembly,
where eight of 30 lawmakers initiated an impeachment proceeding against the
state Governor, Dr. Samuel Ortom, with the aid of the police, despite the fact
that the police ought to be under the direction of the governor as stipulated
by the constitution, is cited as the most recent abuse of the police by the
executive to serve political end.
They traced the recent history of the police by the
executive to the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo under whose
watch sitting governors, including Dr. Chris Ngige and Mr. Peter Obi both of
Anambra State; Senator Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo State; and Chief Joshua Dariye of
Plateau State were summarily harassed out of office by political opponents with
the aid of the police.
Although they all got their mandates back through the
intervention of the Supreme Court, their harrowing experience, said analysts,
could not have been adequately made up for by the justice they got from the
courts.
Perhaps the intervention of the judiciary, which restored
the governors’ right in harsh tones, moderated the temperament of the Alhaji
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan administrations that succeeded
Obasanjo.
Although President Muhammadu Buhari in the statement by his
media aide, Mr. Femi Adesina, Tuesday recommitted to constitutionalism, many
analysts are of the view that the legislature needs its own police in order to
maintain the delicate balance of power between the executive and legislature,
and preserve the principle of separation of power as enshrined in the 1999
Constitution as amended.
“There is a need to institute a balance of power and review
the constitutional basis for the vesting of police powers in the executive arm
alone,” an analyst said, pointing out that elsewhere, specifically, the United
States, the legislature has its own police that protect it.
Actually, the US Congress has a force called United States
Capitol Police (USCP), which according to Wikipedia, is a federal law
enforcement agency charged with protecting the United States Congress within
the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its territories.
It said: “The USCP is the only full service federal law
enforcement agency responsible to the legislative branch of the U.S.
government.”
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