Human rights activist Omoyele Sowore has said that Nigeria could reduce terrorism by almost 70 percent if the Federal Government diverts part of the military budget into internal policing and security reforms.

“All that cost to the military that is stolen, filtered, or mismanaged, or properly spent where they claimed to, if you invest that in internal policing in a year, you will get a reduction in terrorism by almost 70 per cent.

“You get a reduction in kidnapping by almost 80 per cent, you get almost zero per cent in crime rate all over the country,” he said on Tuesday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.

Sowore stated that Nigeria’s security architecture was broken because of poor police welfare and misplaced budget priorities, adding that the police are underpaid and undervalued despite bearing the brunt of internal security.

“An average senator takes 30 to 50 million naira, and a police officer—who doesn’t go to sleep, who guards your borders, houses, parties, children’s schools, and to whom you report whenever anything happens—is getting paid nothing,” the former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), flagbearer, said.

The publisher insisted that no police officer should earn less than ₦500,000 per month.

“Before you say, ‘Is that fiscally sustainable?’—do you count the cost of not properly equipping and paying a policeman, and judge that against what it will cost if you’re doing the same?

“You cannot leave the police in this condition and expect them to protect you. That is how to judge investment that needs to be made—not to say, ‘Oh, if we pay them well, how are we going to sustain that?’

“You sustain insecurity and know how much it costs you. You know how much an Apache helicopter costs you—instead of spending that money on policing and ensuring that you don’t have to bomb within your country,” he said.