Issues in decentralised police: Public scepticism raises a ‘how’ – not a ‘why’ – question, By Deji Olatoye

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The elite consensus has, at last, acknowledged the terrible grinding noise. The lesson of public scepticism is that opening up the bad engine no longer requires courage, as much as it does wisdom. As the National Assembly deliberates the path forward, we must painstakingly consider the operational, fiscal and accountability factors of a decentralised police against Nigeria’s peculiarities.

In late 2025, an unusual consensus on the need for decentralised policing emerged. Driven by the twin pressures of rampant internal violence and a damaging US designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern,” functionaries from President Bola Tinubu to the Governors’ Forums of both the southern and northern states all agreed to it, employing the familiar language of “state police.” Yet beneath this elite consensus, public scepticism remains audible. Many are asking, almost rhetorically, “won’t governors simply turn state police into enforcers of thirty-six political fiefdoms?” Such doubts, while understandable, risk obscuring a basic truth: the current system has severely underserved citizens, a failure rooted in a fundamental design flaw that now demands correction.

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Yet, this public caution is our most valuable asset. It compels us to see that the goal is not decentralisation for its own sake, but the creation of a functional system. At the heart of the current dysfunction lies a flawed constitutional framework. Section 11(2) of the 1999 constitution empowers the Houses of Assembly of the states to make laws for the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order in their respective states, similar to the powers of the National Assembly with respect to the federation in Section 11(1). Yet, item 45 of the Exclusive Legislative List in the same constitution reserves policing exclusively to the Federal Government. In fact, securing supplies and services – essentially personnel and materiel – for the actualisation of the powers under Section 11(2) has to be specifically designated by the National Assembly. This contradiction puts a lie to the popular designation of governors as the chief security officers of their states. It creates a security architecture in which two critical gears grind at odds. The emerging consensus hears the noise. The task is to reengineer the machine carefully.

For years, Nigerians accepted this flawed design as a necessary, if clumsy, compromise for national unity – a post-civil-war necessity. But the evidence of failure is now overwhelming. The 2023 World Internal Security & Police Index ranks Nigeria 124th out of 125 countries. The lived experience of citizens confirms the statistic. Between 2020 and 2024, the North-West accounted for 59.6 per cent of all kidnappings (driven by banditry), while the North-Central suffered 72.3 per cent of farmer-herder conflict fatalities (Nextier’s Nigeria Violent Conflicts Database, 2025). The South-East grapples with syndicated kidnapping and secessionist violence, the South-South with cultism and oil theft, while the South-West contends with diverse crimes. One distant, centralised gear cannot mesh with or resolve these fundamentally divergent local crises.

The fact is that Nigeria stands out of step with the guiding principle for the efficient design of policing structures globally: subsidiarity, by which the policing authority should reside at the lowest effective level of government. Federal systems like the United States and Switzerland constitutionally reserve general policing to their states and cantons. Unitary states like the UK devolve via legislation to municipalities under the supervision of locally elected officials, while Spain cedes it to autonomous regions.

This grinding contradiction has now produced a grey zone of legality to which states respond either through desperate innovation or brazen exploitation, creating outfits of widely varying legitimacy and effectiveness. Regulated experiments exist – Lagos State Neighbourhood Safety Corps and Security Trust Fund – but so do problematic mandates, such as Hisbah in Kano, which at times cram down on constitutionally guaranteed rights. From the Civilian Joint Task Force in the North-East to Amotekun in the South-West and Ebube Agu in the South-East, the country has become a patchwork of ad-hoc arrangements. The same contradiction sets the pretext for the opaque “security votes.” In 2025 alone twenty-one states allocated ₦133 billion through this mechanism, with no standardised audit linking expenditure to tangible security outcomes. Formally decentralising policing powers offer an opportunity to close current loopholes by bringing the assorted initiatives under a common, minimum standards.

The fact is that Nigeria stands out of step with the guiding principle for the efficient design of policing structures globally: subsidiarity, by which the policing authority should reside at the lowest effective level of government. Federal systems like the United States and Switzerland constitutionally reserve general policing to their states and cantons. Unitary states like the UK devolve via legislation to municipalities under the supervision of locally elected officials, while Spain cedes it to autonomous regions. India’s hybrid structure blends state control with a national officers corps. Each nation has engineered a mechanism that suits its peculiarities.

South Africa offers a cautionary tale. On the face of it, a federal system that operates a single police structure, yet the country has merely taken a different tack to subsidiarity – significant privatisation of policing services. A 2025 estimate puts the private security industry, the world’s largest, at 600,000 officers – far outnumbering public police and the military combined. An Apartheid-era legacy, the historical separation of population groups and deep economic inequality make it possible to apportion police auspices to corporations and gated communities that are able to outsource security to private providers. However, this has merely produced tiered security outcomes: 60 per cent of whites are able to access private protection, compared with only 5 per cent of blacks, in a 2003–2017 survey. The result is the third worst security outcomes globally on the WISPI index. This speaks to the occasional call – typically by well-heeled Nigerians – for the broader legalisation of firearms. Nigeria’s model must prioritise equity and broad access, not elite privilege.

What if we reimagine policing through cooperative federalism? By tailoring our subsidiarity, we could assign general policing powers to subnationals – perhaps states or regions – via constitutional amendment or legislative devolution. Operational gearing would clearly delineate federal and subnational functions while establishing nationwide minimum standards. Fiscal fuel lines must be rerouted transparently, closing the current spending leakages through accountable channels and realigning revenue distribution to match new responsibilities.

The emerging elite consensus must evolve into a solution focused on a distinctly Nigerian design. Decentralisation invites thoughtful consideration of the opportunities. Aligning responsibility with authority allows us to reengineer the disjointed elements which, borrowing from the engine metaphor, include operational gearing, fiscal fuel lines, and accountability gauges.

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What if we reimagine policing through cooperative federalism? By tailoring our subsidiarity, we could assign general policing powers to subnationals – perhaps states or regions – via constitutional amendment or legislative devolution. Operational gearing would clearly delineate federal and subnational functions while establishing nationwide minimum standards. Fiscal fuel lines must be rerouted transparently, closing the current spending leakages through accountable channels and realigning revenue distribution to match new responsibilities. Most critically, accountability gauges – tiered independent oversight bodies, community review panels, national regulatory standards – must be embedded from the beginning, not bolted on as an afterthought.

The elite consensus has, at last, acknowledged the terrible grinding noise. The lesson of public scepticism is that opening up the bad engine no longer requires courage, as much as it does wisdom. As the National Assembly deliberates the path forward, we must painstakingly consider the operational, fiscal and accountability factors of a decentralised police against Nigeria’s peculiarities. This we propose to do, at some depth, in the next three articles.

Deji Olatoye is a partner at The Lodt Law Offices, Lagos.