African Action Congress presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore has said that the police recruitment process greatly influences the behavior of officers.

He said the process must be well discussed if the country is to address police brutality.

“Police reform is personal to me. I have been a victim of police brutality since my college days. To reform the police, the issue of police recruitment must be attacked. There is no regulation on how police are recruited and the results are questionable characters and unqualified uniformed men,” Sowore said Saturday in an interview with cool fm.

Sowore spoke about the South-West security team, Amotekun, saying that he believed in any group or person who was genuinely interested in the security of people and society in general. However, his position was that they have proper training. He said that he had realized that Amotekun had also been “involved in brutality”.

He also said that his party, the AAC, differed from other political parties because it was based on an ideology.

He said: “It is based on ideology and on personalities who have convictions. People who have radically distinguished themselves, who believe Nigeria shouldn’t work this way.”

Speaking further, Sowore alleged that other parties were transactional structures. “They come after four years to talk about elections in the neighborhood and when the transaction ends, they come back only after four years again. This has not worked for the country. Therefore, the AAC is different,” he said.

He added: “Politics should not be for political middlemen, those who see politics as a job to feed themselves and survive. Politicians must also have a decent job.

“As a politician, I am also a journalist and have taught as a professor at two universities in New York.”

Speaking about the call for restructuring, he said: “Restructuring is another aphorism for confusion. The best way to restructure Nigeria is to first have a new constitution. The constitution in question was not sovereign. If it were sovereign, the conference itself would have determined how the constitution would have been promulgated.

“People continue to lose hope in the democratic process. I think it depends on the Nigerians. It depends on the people who listen to change the course of the country and if not, we will be here again complaining in a few years. “