By Abdu Rafiu
A great many of our compatriots and undoubtedly silent non-Nigerians as well who see the solution to Nigeria’s worsening security challenge in the establishment of state police must have heaved a sigh of relief in the President’s speech last Monday, when he said the setting up of “state police is no longer optional but a national imperative.” I say relief because contrary to his well-known stance on the issue over the years, a statement from his office three weeks ago gave the impression that he might be shifting from that position. That seemingly reversed stance that sent cold shivers down the spine of those who have eagerly been looking up to him to give the establishment of state police priority consideration reads as follows:
“The issue of State Police is more complex than the over-simplified approach of the factional Afenifere’s statement. Every administration policy is subject to security impact assessment before implementation, and there is a difference between the State Police being widely advocated and Police State that critics may blame the Federal Government for if implemented without caution.”
As if to suggest that the present centralised arrangement is delivering satisfactory results, the statement signed by Sunday Dare, President Tinubu’s special adviser on media and public communications, further reads: “Contrary to the impression created, the administration’s security record is impressive. Over 13, 500 terrorists, bandits and insurgents have been neutralised and 7,000 arrested in the past year, though there is still some news of abductions and violent attacks. The administration’s proactive response to security-related matters has paved the way for more farmers to return to their farms, impacting production and supply.”
By invoking the spectre of police state to justify his caution, in it lies the bogey of subtle misuse of police if they are put in the hands of state governors, fears already allayed by several prominent stakeholders. Indeed, former President Ibrahim Babangida was direct in disabusing the minds of the citizenry, He had said the claim of misuse by the governors was “unfounded”, indeed, “exaggerated.” And speaking in 2017 on restructuring behind which he threw his full weight, Babangida said: “Added to this desire is the need to commence the process of having state police across the states of the Federation… The initial fears of state governors misusing the officers and men of the state police have become increasingly eliminated with renewed vigour in citizens’ participation in and confidence to interrogate power. We cannot be detained by those fears and allow civilization to leave us behind. We must as a people with one destiny and common agenda take decisions for the sake of posterity in our shared commitment to launch our country on the path of development and growth. Policing has become sophisticated that we cannot continue to operate our old methods and expect different results.”
Former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo while in office back in 2018 spoke in the same vein. He had said: “Securing Nigeria’s over 923, 768 square kilometres and its 180 million people requires a continual re-engineering of our security architecture and strategies. We cannot realistically police a country the size of Nigeria centrally from Abuja. State Police and other community policing methods are the way to go.”
In my previous reflection on the subject, I quoted former Governor, now Senator, Henry Dickson and Governor Jonah Jang who shared their experiences while in office and had come to the conclusion like Professor Osinbajo that the creation of state police was the only way out.
Dickson corroborating Osinbajo’s position went on to argue that the prevailing security situation and the need for an effective challenge had made the establishment of state police mandatory. His conviction is anchored on the fact that the personnel would be drawn from the locality that makes up the state. Such personnel would be able to access valuable information required to track down criminals.
It is a position shared by Major-General David Jemibewon, although he did not expressly press for state police. His thoughts are in his book, The Nigeria Police in Transition: Issues, Problems and Prospects.
Agreeing with Osinbajo, Dickson said the current federally controlled police had become overstretched owing to the wide ratio of the police to the rapid increase in population of Nigerians. In the same 2017, the then Speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara drew attention to the ubiquitous presence of the military everywhere even, according to him, in civil matters the police ought to be able to sort out.
The worst hit zones in terms of insecurity were initially the North East and North Central before it spread to North West — in the North East where insurgents have held the country by the jugular; bandits and kidnappers in the North-West; kidnappers and bandits in North Central with herdsmen constituting the most menacing group, sweeping through farmlands and rural communities in an orgy of bloodletting, killing and maiming as well as mindless destruction of property.
The situation was so bad in Zamfara State that the then Governor who also doubled at the time as the chairman of the Governors’ Forum, Mr. Abdullaziz Yari, threw up his hands in resignation! He washed his hands off being decorated as the chief security officer of his state. He saw his position as a joke. His argument was that he had no operational control over the police. The instruction of a governor may have to be forwarded by the state police commissioner to his boss in Abuja, the Inspector -General, who may also wish to seek clearance from the President before it can be carried out.
The police have been overwhelmed and have spread thin; their hands are full, facing challenges in several fronts at the same time. The soldiers that ought to be the last resort, the last line of defence, are themselves engaged in combating insurgents. They are drafted to pursue bandits and curb kidnapping, and have spread thin, too.
Such was the grim challenge that grieving Governor Sam Ortom, while announcing the killing of 60 more persons in the last week of February 2018, said his people were mowed down by rampaging herdsmen despite what was called “the launching of Ayem A. Kpatuma military exercise to check the excesses of invaders.” Earlier on the New Year Eve of 2018, about 70 people had been killed. This predictably got Ortom exasperated.
In my criticism of President Buhari for his cold attitude and incomprehensible obstinacy to the issue of state police in 2018 in these pages in the wake of killings in Plateau State, I did ask: ‘How many more people are we waiting to see killed before we become wise to apply the simplest, the most commonsensical panacea: establishment of state police?’ I said policing is local and that is how it is in all stable and secure free world.
Newspapers have shouted themselves hoarse on the urgent need for the setting up of state police. The Governors’ Forum comprising all the 36 state governors have been unrelenting in pressing for it. At the time Governor Babatunde Fashola was the captain of his set to borrow the words of former Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, (‘the captain of our set’ were his exact words), pressed hard for the creation of state police.
Governors are the people who know where the shoe pinches them. About the time the Forum met, under the chairmanship of Abdullaziz Yari, his backyard was on fire; 31 persons had just been mowed down.
Long before the Forum’s clamour, the 2014 National Conference Report had strongly recommended state and community policing. The Report of the then Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai Committee set up by APC and submitted in January, 2018, left no one in doubt the imperative of the creation of state police.
As of February 2018, Nigeria was host to the sixth largest IDP population in the world. In my writing that year on the subject, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States had the largest number of IDPs. Together with its outskirts Maiduguri saw its population almost doubled from one million to nearly two million. From unceasing mayhem, Benue as of February 2018 had 160, 000 displaced persons. The figures have not much come down, rather it has steadily been on the rise. As I have pointed out a few times governments North and South, the Houses of Assembly began to enact laws to help themselves by setting up security outfits, convinced about the necessity to face their security challenges frontally by themselves, perhaps hoping that their action would awaken the Federal from its sickening slumber to do the needful!
Come to think of it only of Wednesday, the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) in Kogi State, led by the Deputy Commandant, Kinta Jeremiah Danjuma said on television that his team pursued fleeing kidnappers into their hide-out in the forest and arrested six of them. During interrogation they discovered that four of them were from Zamfara State.
The Lagos model started by Fashola in raising special support for the police attracted other states. They sought to copy it, with Kano and Kaduna standing out. Both called their own Peace Corps. And upon succeeding Fashola, Governor Ambode Akinwumi took it a notch higher by setting up Neighbourhood Safety Corps. If these are not sufficient evidence that the states are yearning for state police to effectively secure their states, what further proof does the foot-dragging Federal Authority need?
As Dr. Kayode Fayemi said, the governors spend their security votes supporting police, providing their needs, especially vehicles, logistics and in Lagos special allowances. As of 2017 August, the head of delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross said by that month more than 10,000 Nigerians were missing.
I have said in this column before that were there to be state police in Borno when Boko Haram offensive was brewing, through intelligence gathering helped by familiarity with the land and culture, they would have nibbed the plan in the bud. And if it showed signs of getting out hand, they would have moved swiftly to put down the rebellion. They would have given their all rather than watching their own towns disintegrate socially and economically. Who would be happy seeing his own people wandering with few belongings on their heads and clutching the hands of their children, looking for an emergency place of abode and makeshift camps, headed towards an uncertain future?
This is why I see President Bola Tinubu’s speech at the constitutional review and national security architecture as giving the nation hope and readiness to roll up his sleeves, and thus redressing his foot dragging. Here is a President who has been a two-term governor of a complex state as Lagos and who has proven capable of tackling her insecurity challenges despite the state’s policing complexities. He retooled what he inherited from Brig-General Marwa and renamed the architecture Rapid Response Squad. He is not known to be intimidated by complex problems and shrink from tackling them.
Listen to what he said, represented by the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Abubakar Badaru at the high-level Legislative Dialogue on Nigeria’s National Security Architecture:
“The debate over state police is no longer theoretical. It is grounded in the daily fears and lived anxieties of Nigerians: farmers afraid to tend their fields, traders unsure of safe passage, and communities abandoned to self -help.”
He said the current centralised security system has outlived its usefulness. He fears that failure to realign the Constitution with Nigeria’s lived realities might pose a grave threat to national unity. He described the 1999 Constitution as fundamental to its democracy but outdated in dealing with modern security threats as posed by rising complexity of terrorism, cybercrime, farmer-herder conflicts, piracy, and separatist agitations. “These are clear indicators that the current legal framework is inadequate to secure Nigeria’s vast and diverse territory.
“The pace of change in technology, in the complexity of security threats, and in the dynamics of our federal structure has far outstripped the capacity of some constitutional provisions. Our constitution must evolve or risk becoming a danger to the very unity it is meant to protect,” he said.
What then followed naturally was his calling for constitutional amendment that would move policing from the Exclusive Legislative List to the Concurrent List, enabling states with the capacity and political will to establish their own police forces. He said such a move would ensure more accountable, community-based policing while preserving federal coordination and oversight. In his words: “We must learn from global best practices, adapting decentralized models that enhance local accountability without sacrificing national oversight.”
He listed pro-active steps his Administration has taken to provide security to vulnerable segment of the citizenry, particularly school children. He mentioned the establishment of the National Safe Schools Response Coordination Centre. There was also the approval of community policing frameworks aimed at narrowing the trust gap between citizens and law enforcement. His belief is that “These efforts must be complemented with structural changes. Without constitutional backing for decentralised policing, these initiatives will remain limited in impact.”
The President then threw the challenge at the National Assembly, particularly the House Committee on Constitution Review chaired by the Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, urging them to act with urgency and courage in pushing through security-focused amendments.
He said: “None of these reforms will materialise without legislative courage and political will. Let History record that in this chamber, on this day, Nigeria’s leaders chose courage over caution, vision over fear, and reform over inertia.”
President Tinubu’s speech was profound and convincing. And it is enheartening that it raises great hope that the end to the seemingly intractable security mayhem may well be in sight, after all.
If these are his thoughts all along, what was the haste of the earlier statement from his office which gave a different and wrong impression that Nigeria had a long way to go to witness the decentralization of the police and creating another tier! The President did not seem to remember that Oba Oladipo Olaitan, the leader of the factional Afenifere who signed the statement criticising him, was Special Adviser on Security to Alhaji Lateef Jakande when he was Governor of Lagos State. Jakande attempted to set up police for Lagos State. This was knocked down by the Shagari Administration that ruled the effort as unconstitutional. The would-be staff were then moved to constitute Lagos State Traffic Management Authority, the first of such outfit in the country.
The House leadership appears to be on the same page with the President. As Kalu said, “We are here to listen to those who wear the shoes and know where they pinch.” Speaker Tajudeen Abbas said in view of prevalence of terrorism, banditry, piracy, militancy and oil theft across regions, the House is committed to taking practical legislative steps beyond motions and bill to support the government anti-insecurity efforts.
The idea of different communities and zones establishing their own police preceded the coming of the Nigeria Police which was established in 1930 by the colonial authorities. The Egba United Government had muted the idea of setting up its own police in 1900 and members of the hunters’ society constituted itself into a force. By 1903, the thought crystallised and was put forward by the Alake and the Order-in-Council of Egba United Government to Governor MacGregor in Lagos, but the Egba Government received the nod to go ahead in 1905. Ibadan followed suit in 1906 and Oyo in 1907. The formal police system was refined and the Western Region ended up having a three-tier policing system.
The North also decided to have its own policing system between 1900 and 1906. It resented what it called the centralizing tendences in Lagos. This should explain why the agitation for state police is loudest in the South West. The Northern Establishment comprising its governors and traditional rulers a few weeks back threw its weight behind the creation of state police.
The East did not have local or regional police in the First Republic. It was contended with the existence of Nigeria Police.
A year ago, all the 36 Houses of Assembly in the country and the Civil Society Organizations (COS) backed the establishment of State Police. They believe it is the best way to tackle insecurity in Nigeria. They met in Abuja under the auspices of Conference of Speakers.
As for Oba Olu Falae who has seen it all in government as Secretary to the government of the Federation, permanent secretary, Minister of Finance and had passed through the private sector as a bank Managing Director, he is very passionate about the creation of state police. He said effective policing is local. What I am getting at, therefore, is that there is already a national consensus for the creation of state police. The work of the National Assembly in amending the constitution to that effect has thus been made easier.
The Guardian
