State police and matters arising

We are not between a rock and a hard place. The security crisis we face today is solvable without a wholesale reconfiguration of our policing system. What is needed first is the political will to do the right thing and we also need to be honest and truthful with ourselves about what we want as a people and a nation

One topical issue that has dominated public discourse across different administrations since the return to democracy twenty-six years ago is the issue of state police. Every government at the federal level has either spoken glibly and made perfunctory attempts to create one or pushed vehemently and made a spirited drive to decentralise the nation’s overly centralised policing structure. However, neither of the two groups has come close to achieving this objective. The closest we have are regional or state security outfits set up by state governments.

These makeshift security outfits that are nothing more than glorified vigilantes, who are tasked with addressing the security crisis in their domains, are underfunded, poorly equipped and understaffed, hence making it difficult for them to tackle the problems they are set up to address, which then defeats the essence and purpose of their establishment in the first place. However, the call for the creation of state police has become louder in recent years owing to the perennial violent attacks and wanton killings occasioned by the deepening security crisis and the palpable failure of the security agencies to end the menace of brutal armed non-state actors. These unending attacks have left thousands dead and thousands displaced from their ancestral homes.

Yesterday, President Bola Tinubu underscored the importance of decentralising the nation’s police system, noting that it will solve the nation’s security challenges. Tinubu, who spoke while addressing a delegation of prominent Katsina indigenes led by Governor Dikko Radda who paid him a courtesy visit at the presidential Villa, affirmed his readiness to establish state police as it is inevitable in light of the nation’s search for enduring peace, stability and order. Expectedly, his statement has reignited debates that usually characterise state police conversations and discourse.

While many Nigerians acknowledge the need for the creation of state police, concerns have been raised by cynics who fear that having a policing system where the officers are only answerable to the governors of their states portends danger for the polity. The concerns and fears of the latter group are not unfounded; in fact, they are informed by our socio-political realities. We’ve seen the enormous power and influence that state governors, especially those elected on the same platform as the ruling federal government, wield and how they use them ruthlessly whenever they need to. We’ve all been witnesses to how some state governors use thugs and hoodlums to attack political opponents and undermine democratic processes to achieve stated and defined political goals.

Even without a state police, many Nigerian governors, for the most part, act like a power-drunk, all-conquering emperor. One shudders to think of what they would do if they had a well-trained, sufficiently equipped police force that answers solely to them. The principle of sportsmanship is alien to our governors and politicians. They are power-hungry and money-seeking charlatans. To many of them, a state police is the security cover they need to unleash the Adolf Hitler in them and summon their inner Mobutu. Our nascent democracy may not survive the fallout of the intemperate abuse of an entity that is established to ensure the security and safety of the people should state police become a thing.

Also, some believe that Nigeria’s security challenges are insurmountable under our current security architecture. They opined that what is needed is a deliberate, committed effort and political will to address the problems. We’ve not exhausted the full strength and might of our security agencies and deployed them the way a nation battling an existential security crisis would do, for us to resort to the establishment of state police. And the elephant in the room: the funding of state police. How do we fund the establishment of state police? Don’t forget that many of these states are struggling and cannot fulfil their concurrent and capital obligation to their people. We are already grappling with a poor and abysmal national police force that is filled with terribly paid, poorly trained and trigger-happy officers who have largely become the very thing they are supposed to tackle. It will spell doom for everyone involved if this disturbing and abhorrent system of policing we see with the federal government-controlled Nigerian police force is what will be replicated at the state level.

We are not between a rock and a hard place. The security crisis we face today is solvable without a wholesale reconfiguration of our policing system. What is needed first is the political will to do the right thing and we also need to be honest and truthful with ourselves about what we want as a people and a nation. We’ve heard of how the government, under the pretext of non-kinetic security decisions, pays bandits to placate and stop them from attacking people and also rehabilitates terrorists and integrates them into the very society they terrorise and kill its people. This does not speak well of the government and does not portray it as one that is interested in finding a lasting solution to the nation. These are some of the fundamental and underlying security issues that need to be addressed. Establishing a state police force sounds like a great idea, but it won’t necessarily make these challenges disappear. What we will get at best is 36 presidents who will start chipping away at the foundation of democracy.