On 26 November, Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, announced in a statement personally signed by him that he had “decided to declare a nationwide security emergency” to be accompanied by some measures, including the recruitment by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Armed Forces of 20,000 and 50,000 new personnel respectively. In the fortnight preceding the announcement, a flurry of frightening terror incidents had created among populations and communities around the country a heightened state of fear. It also reinforced the perception of a normalisation of insecurity and of the traumas associated with it.
Yet, the text and terms of the president’s announcement were odd, to say the least.
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Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution empowers the president to declare or proclaim a “state of emergency.” Under the terms of the Constitution, an emergency proclamation is time-bound (for an initial period of not more than six months) and must be confirmed by a joint resolution of a qualified majority of both chambers of the National Assembly within 48 hours of the proclamation.
The predicate conditions for the proclamation of a state of emergency in Nigeria under Section 305(3) of the constitution are that the country is at war or in imminent danger of invasion or of entering into a war or suffering from a breakdown of public order and safety or in imminent danger of such breakdown. The flood of casualties would seem to suggest that the predicate condition of a country at war exists.
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Apart from thousands killed and many more unaccounted for, reports of 7,568 people abducted in 1,130 incidents across the country in just one year between July 2023 to June 2024 suggest also that there is significant breakdown in public safety. However, the president was unwilling to cite any of these as grounds for his action, probably because it would represent an admission of how bad things have become under his watch.
Moreover, a formal acknowledgement of the existence of an armed conflict would entail the application of the norms of international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions Act, which could lead to the recognition as belligerents the motley crowd of insurgent groups presently afflicting the country. That is considered a step too far for a country that has already survived a brutal civil war from July 1967 to January 1970.
Howsoever it is looked at, this “nationwide security emergency” declared by President Tinubu does not sound like the “state of emergency” authorised by the constitution. The use of “emergency” to describe the measures announced by the president was artful, designed to create the public impression that the administration was at last waking up to its primary responsibility to assure the safety and security of all who live in Nigeria. In reality, none of the measures announced by the president requires the existence of an emergency for their accomplishment nor does it make sense why the administration had to wait until now to consider them for implementation. Moreover, the so-called “emergency” is open-ended. It is not hedged by duration and there has been no effort to take it before the National Assembly.
In an innocuous insertion in the announcement, however, the president invites “the National Assembly to begin reviewing our laws to allow states that require state police to establish them.” In this sentence, President Tinubu commits the sleight of hand of suggesting that “state police” will be merely optional only for those states who want it. Of course, he knew better than even suggest that.
State police has become a very emotive expression in Nigeria’s political and security lexicon. Politicians who cannot be bothered to do the most basic of things to protect their people somehow create the impression that they could have accomplished that and more if only they had the magic wand of state police. The evidence to the contrary is very stark and conveniently buried.
First, the record of state security initiatives has been very abysmal. Native Authority policing was abolished following the onset of military rule in 1966 because of the tendency to make them instruments of decentralized despotism. Writing in 2018, pioneer post-colonial public servant, Ahmed Joda, recalled the record of the Native Authority Police: “first generation pioneer opposition politicians of the forties and fifties and up to the end of the civilian era in 1966 experienced hell…. Many of them, especially at election times were simply rounded up at rallies, walked to the Native Authority courts, promptly convicted and sent to another Native Authority institution: the Native Authority Prison for long enough periods to take them out for the election period and render political opposition prostrate. Some were simply adducted and disappeared for the period of the elections.” There is nothing to suggest that State police this time will be any less despotic. On the contrary, the omens indicate that it could be worse.
Second, when he introduced Islamic criminal law of Huddud (crimes against God) into Zamfara State at the beginning of a wave of Sharia insertion into north-west Nigeria in October 1999, then governor, Sani Yerima, justified it with reference to the need to upgrade public safety and security in the state. Despite his best spin, public safety and security in Zamfara State did not get better. Instead, it has disintegrated.
Zamfara State was far from the only state to experience this trend. In the Middle Belt, Benue State adopted a vigilante law in 2000, creating armed volunteer guards supposedly to enhance the protection of the state. Far from enhancing safety and security in Benue, the State turned into a haven of insecurity. Around the same time, Anambra State in the south-east launched its own Anambra Vigilante Service (AVS) under cover of state law in 2000. Under that law, then Governor Chinwoke Mbadinuju claimed authority to invite and establish the Bakassi as an armed, anti-crime vigilante in the state. Anyone who wants to understand how insecurity subsequently prospered in south-east Nigeria must return to the origins of the story in the atrocity-with-impunity franchise that the Bakassi became.
Third, when it reported to the presidency in August 2012, the Parry Osayande Presidential Committee on Police Reform recommended quite strongly against the clamour for State police. At the submission of the report, the Chairperson of the Committee, Parry Osayande, a former Deputy Inspector-General of Police, feared that the country lacked the institutional wherewithal to oversight, train, or professionalise a proliferation of armed police units across the country. He recommended effective de-centralisation of the existing NPF “with effective participation of state governors; financial autonomy and better professionalism for the police.” Six years later, Ahmed Joda supported “the need to decentralize our policing system.”
The question now is how to achieve that goal.
The political fad of today appears to be that the answer lies in State Police. Many people will argue that any opposition to this idea, first, reflects path-dependency; and second, that the times have changed and require that the country should explore the idea. Third, advocates of “true federalism” also denounce any opposition to state police, even when they are not able to tell anyone what exactly makes their version of federalism any truer than the next.
The times may have changed certainly but not necessarily for the better. If anything, the reluctance and caution sounded by Parry Osayande 13 years ago is even more resounding today in a context of corroded democratic controls and multi-dimensional impunity.
State police will not be served a la carte nor will it be a matter of variable geometry. Every state governor will see it as a necessary accessory of power. It will not be reserved to only governors who understand the idea of constrained power. Those who enjoy abuse of power will be the first to acquire it, not to advance security but to visit insecurity on their political enemies.
So, in addition to the very challenged NPF which the country struggles with today, we will have 37 more, one for each state and another for the FCT. Each will function under the control of the governor and will be armed by their gubernatorial patrons. This is not state police. Instead, it could be a recipe for a de-centralised police state with no hope of relief. In their enthusiasm, advocates of State police offer no safeguards against this danger.
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and can be reached through [email protected].
