EDITORIAL: Making the state police work

The state police advocacy in Nigeria recently reached an irreversible turn with its approval by 30 state Houses of Assembly. A constitutional threshold of 24 out of 36 state legislatures was required. This has now paved the way for the National Assembly to consummate the process by amending Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution, which prohibits the existence of any other police besides the Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

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The clamour for multi-layered policing for effectiveness, and a better federation, has endured for decades. Regrettably, successive administrations had been impervious to reason despite it being an integral part of a federal political structure. The consequence has been extraordinarily damaging: insecurity has spiralled out of control such that kidnapping for ransom has assumed industrial scale. Terrorism and mass killings by gunmen in the North-East, North-Central and North-West add to this record scourge. Therefore, Nigeria ranks fourth in the 2026 Global Terrorism Index.

These petrifying security concerns have largely been a result of swathes of Nigeria’s territory being under the firm control of non-state actors. Quite often, gunmen invade communities, markets, churches and mosques. They kill and kidnap hundreds of citizens and escape without a trace.

In Taraba, for instance, gunmen invaded a market on 25 October and massacred 33 people, while 15 others drowned in a river while escaping the attack. The 42 students from Musa Primary and Secondary School in Askira Uba, Borno State, kidnapped on 12 May, are still in captivity. The mindless mass killings in Plateau and Benue communities have defied solutions because of the lack of a scintilla of the presence of law enforcement personnel.

During the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, 63,111 persons were reportedly killed, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker; and within two years of President Bola Tinubu’s government, this ghastly record ratcheted up by 10,217 deaths. Simply put, the Nigeria Police Force, with about 300,000 personnel, cannot adequately protect the lives and property of Nigeria’s estimated population of over 250 million people.

Besides more boots on the ground, an efficient policing model should have capacity in intelligence gathering, crime prevention, investigation, forensic processing, public order enforcement, community protection and criminal justice support. However, none of these parameters, in our judgment, is the forte of the police as currently constituted. Therefore, a policing model that has failed woefully since it supplanted the regional policing of the First Republic should be decentralised and reorganised.
While the NPF will coexist with state police systems, as is the case in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Canada, among other jurisdictions, our perspective at PREMIUM TIMES is that state police is not tantamount to glorified vigilante outfits bearing arms and ammunition in new uniforms and security patrol vans. Policing has become both a social and scientific enterprise.
First, recruitment should be scrupulous to avoid the enlistment of criminals and ethically challenged people. It should be handled by State Police Councils, which must be statutorily independent of governors. The proper training of recruits and development of intelligence-gathering capability are non-negotiable to ensure that those hired understand their duties. Robust funding is essential as a first line charge. States not ready to satisfy these critical conditions should steer clear of state police.

The new police entities should avoid the calcified disciplinary problems associated with law enforcement across Nigeria. We cannot afford to have a constellation of new policing entities replicating the NPF in human rights violations, erection of roadblocks for brazen bribe collection and the gross dereliction of duty.

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Embedding state police personnel in communities makes for better results in crime detection, prevention and quicker response to emergencies. That is the difference between state police and the NPF. The former Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, painted this picture clearly in 2017 as calls for police decentralisation reached stratospheric proportions. He observed that, “policing is a local function; you simply cannot effectively police Nigeria from Abuja.” A perpetually absent Leviathan cannot enforce the law.

Nonetheless, the possible abuse of state police is real. This is arguably glaring in the growing fascist tendencies some governors appear to exhibit. Despite not yet possessing state police apparatuses, some have started to curtail the rights of opposition party stalwarts to free movement. While others are engaged in the recruitment of thugs to harass, intimidate and disrupt opposition campaigns. These are clear assaults on the Constitution.

Such abuse, as it relates to the performance of Houses of Assembly, is why Section 11 (4) of the Constitution is provided for the National Assembly to take over their functions in the event of dysfunctionality, until such a time that normalcy returns. A similar bulwark should be provided for the state police. The limits of state police powers should be clearly spelt out and ambiguities in legal drafting eliminated.

We believe that the NPF and state police with a common goal – the maintenance of law and order — can coexist and collaborate in the way that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) works with other 160 police services in Canada. The FBI in the US operates alongside approximately 18,000 police outfits belonging to states, municipalities, universities, companies, communities and miscellaneous organisations.

Funding this bold initiative will be imperative. This is where security votes at the state level should be channelled. The era of the mysterious disappearance of these funds in the purview of governors must stop. More fiscal support could be created by tweaking the extant revenue formula in favour of states by slashing the whopping 52.68 per cent that the federal government gets. States collect 26.72 per cent, while 20.60 per cent is sent to the local governments.

There are arguably economic opportunities in this new policing paradigm for states committed to running it effectively. They will be havens for investors and tourists with the prevalence of law and order. This will ignite healthy competition among the 36 states and trigger broad economic growth for our country.

Governors have demonstrated capacity in funding the police. This is evident in their periodic procurement of vehicles, communication gadgets and other forms of support for the NPF. Some even buy arms and ammunition for the police for enhanced performance in their respective jurisdictions. According to the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), in the 10 years to 2018, states funded the police to the tune of ₦2 trillion.

Finally, PREMIUM TIMES hopes that the introduction of state police in Nigeria will put an end to the absurdity of governors and federal police bosses negotiating ceasefires with bandits. For example, this has happened in Zamfara and Katsina states in the past. State police have the potential to put an end to the displacement of millions of citizens living in remote communities under the siege of banditry and insurgency. This is Nigeria’s opportunity for 21st-century law enforcement in a highly complex and diverse socio-political environment.