Coordination of security agencies is the right call. But state police should be added to the mix

President Bola Tinubu struck the right chord in his call for coordination and cooperation among the federal security agencies. His imagery, especially among music lovers, was especially apt.

“You can’t have disharmony in an orchestra,” he declared, after his tour of the new Office of the National Security Adviser; and after also assessing facilities at the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC). “We must,” he insisted, “focus on one tunnel; coordinate, share information, share intelligence and work harder.”

Good: the president also reported an encouraging uptick in hardware at the NCTC, thus declaring the country was in the right direction to achieve its security goal; and banish, once and for all, the current dire security challenges.

These investments that just earned such presidential praise are laudatory. But as the reward for hard work is more work — as that saying goes — the investments call for even more, if we must close the insecurity deficit.

That must come in even better structural chain of upgrades, which the president seemed to imply in his comments. He should commit to them even more.

Here, the Lagos story — how Lagos, when the president was governor — changed both the operational speed and funding of the Nigeria Police within its jurisdiction, is of particular reference. The story of the Lagos Rapid Response Squad (RRS) has since become a national reference point.

But that wouldn’t have happened without a fundamental tweaking of the funding structure. Security hardware — arms, munitions, armoured personnel carriers (APC), protective gears, patrol cars, communication gadgets without which control centres are nothing but shells — don’t come cheap. Effective funding might just be challenging for the government alone — but not so for shared partnership with mutual benefits.

Compared to states, the Federal Government is big and strong. But it appears not big and strong enough to tame today’s security challenges: Boko Haram and allied insurrection, banditry and kidnapping for ransom that funds that heinous crime, routine armed robbery, petty phone grabs and neighbourhood burglaries.

Still, partnership in cost sharing with Business Nigeria, in exchange for safety and security of investors’ prized assets, which can have radically positive impact on the bottom-line, can work wonders. It worked in Lagos. There is no reason it can’t work Nigeria-wide, though on a grander scale.

The president pledged his government to doing whatever was necessary to support and re-jig Nigeria’s security infrastructure. Whatever the details, funding would be crucial to making the plan sustainable. The new government must therefore design a sustainable funding formula, preferably outside conventional thinking.

That brings the issue back to cooperation and intelligence-sharing among the security agencies and effective coordination by their respective service heads. This really ought to be trite. It won’t be the first time a president and commander-in-chief would commend these traits to the security forces. Working for the collective is common sense.

But if such orders seldom worked in the past, what were the structural barriers? These are what the president and his new lieutenants should ponder — and right. A right structure can’t totally eliminate operational drags like conflicting egos or even costly but honest mistakes. But an effective structure limits such tendencies to the barest minimum, other things being equal.

That’s the direction towards which the new administration should work. It bears restating: even the most formidable of hardware would make little impact without adequate coordination. Structural efficiency and effectiveness make coordination easier, if not exactly routine. Which is why it’s good the new president is sounding the bugle early enough in his administration.

Still, even with the federal agencies humming like a well-oiled auto, it’s doubtful if a centralised policing structure can alone turn around the very daunting security challenges. That is why the new government should, as early as possible, put in motion steps to re-introduce state police.

The last raft of constitutional amendments gave the states the right to build and run own correctional centres, as a logical extension of their courts: magistrates’ courts and state high courts. The only thing missing, in states’ criminal-justice system, is the police. It’s time the latest puzzle, in that jigsaw, was added.

Besides, Nigeria is a vast territory. More (wo)men should be put on the ground to do effective policing. State police offers bright intelligence prospects: natives are likely more intimate with their environment than others — so could sniff out crimes even before actual commission.

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