PREVIOUSLY discussed in hushed tones, the idea of state police in Nigeria is gaining more currency. Accordingly, a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has joined the bandwagon of those advocating the decentralisation of policing in the country. It is an idea that is ripe for action.

With insecurity increasingly intractable, pervasive, and mutating, the former president said in Lagos, “I have said it before, and I will say it again. Nigeria should have state police (in all the states) so that they can adequately tackle insecurity.” This is the blunt, authoritative prescription to diminish the insecurity siege upon the country. This recommendation ought to take centre stage in national affairs.

Ordinarily, the responsibility for law and order and consequently, the operational control, management, and superintendence of the police should be a concurrent responsibility of the federal, state, and local governments. Like other advocates of a decentralised policing system, Obasanjo anchored his advocacy on the need to review the deficiencies associated with the current system, which is wholly an ineffective centralised structure. His logic gets support from political convention, and the pragmatism of contemporary society. The only addition to Obasanjo’s pronouncement is that in Nigeria, state police implementation demands urgency, as the threats to life gain ascendancy by the day.

By convention (and often by law), federal political systems, an ideal which Nigeria espouses, operate devolved policing. The United States has the federal police, 50 state police agencies, sheriffs’ departments in counties, police forces in 1,000 cities and 20,000 townships in New England towns, and police forces in 15,000 villages, boroughs, and incorporated towns. “To this list must be added special categories, such as the police of the District of Columbia; various forces attached to authorities governing bridges, tunnels, and parks; university, or ‘campus,’ police forces; and some units that police special districts formed for fire protection, soil conservation, and other diverse purposes,” the Britannica says. Canada, Australia, Germany, and Switzerland operate on similar structures.

Pragmatically, the United Kingdom, though a unitary polity, operates 48 civilian police forces: 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, a national police force in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and three specialist police forces (the British Transport Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and the Ministry of Defence Police).

Therefore, Nigeria is living in a fool’s paradise by delaying the decentralisation of its police system. Although the country is bleeding from Islamic insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, and the Fulani herdsmen onslaught, successive federal administrations and the National Assembly have flatly rejected the state police concept. The two organs of government hide behind the 1999 Constitution that imprudently vests policing in the centre.

Already, the pointers to Nigeria’s fragility are conspicuous everywhere. The Global Terrorism Index ranks Nigeria as the world’s third most terrorised country. In the 14 years to 2020, its ranking on the Fragile States Index increased from 94.4 to 97.27, an average annual growth rate of 0.23 per cent. The latest value is 98 index points in 2021, or out of 179 countries under assessment, Nigeria ranked the 12 most fragile country in the world.

In the first quarter of 2021, Nigeria lost 1,603 persons to violence; 1,774 were kidnapped, tracking done by the Global Rights Nigeria showed. Instead of abating, Q2 and Q3 were far worse: 3,133 and 2,287 persons died in the violence. These figures are frightening. Several states in the North-West, North-East, and North-Central are witnessing large-scale insecurity, as the criminals control territory and collect tributes from the locals.

Policing is appalling in the hinterland. The major cause is the single federal police for a plural, complex country of 211 million persons. Zamfara, one of the states under permanent siege, has fewer than 5,000 police officers for its four million population. This translates to about 1:850 police-to-citizen ratio, well below the United Nations recommendation of 1:450. In August 2020, Katsina State Governor, Aminu Masari, said there were just 30 officers to protect 100 villages in the state. The federal police force strength of about 350,000 – a high percentage of this is irresponsibly attached to VIPs – is thus grossly insufficient.

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has repeatedly and logically canvassed state police. He believes that Nigeria is too large for a central police chief in Abuja to monitor the situation in remote communities far away from the federal capital.

Not surprisingly, many of the actors in the Nigeria Governors’ Forum have become advocates of state police. Among them are Masari, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti, Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo and Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna. In February, el-Rufai harped on the urgency of acting, asking the Federal Government to implement the All Progressives Congress report that recommended state police.

Worryingly, the establishment of state police has been delayed for too long. The military is in virtually all 36 states providing security with the consequences of rights violation. Despite this, kidnapping, terrorism, robbery, smuggling, and other violent crimes are escalating. Worse, the community police project being undertaken by the Federal Government is diversionary and dead on arrival. It faces the same problem with the current single police system.

Liberty and any form of concentration of police power do not go together. And a police system, which is centrally commanded and controlled through a vertical chain of command has proved disastrous for the complexity of the present-day security in the country. Therefore, to save Nigeria from itself, the regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) and the National Assembly should heed the clarion call for state police immediately. It should be clear to all stakeholders by now that this country has unjustly and unduly wasted too many lives. Apart from the loss of lives and property, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry notes that insecurity is driving investors away and keeping the economy in shackles. All legal encumbrances on the path of state police should be dismantled very quickly.

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